sleep

All during the time I live in the matchbox house, I'm afraid to sleep by myself. Or at least from age four to fourteen. i can fall asleep in my bed as long as someone is awake in the house. Usually my father stays up to watch the ten o'clock news. And maybe my sister stays up writing in her diary. That's before she moved out. But I always wake up in the middle of the night, scared to close my eyes for too long. Or even worse-I don't fall asleep at all. I'm dreading the night as the TV is turned off and everything gets dark. Sometimes I pretend I'm sick so that my father will let me sleep in his bed. Having a sore throat works for a while, but one night he's just not having. There I am next to his bed telling him that I have a sore throat but really meaning that I need to get in your bed if I'm going to get any sleep. But tonight he doesn't understand, he thinks I've really got a sore throat and that it needs to be treated. Into the kitchen we go, bright lights, looking down my throat, yelling. Is there a flashlight involved? He has a stash of antibiotic samples because his boss's brother is doctor and because he's paranoid. He wants to give me an antibiotic for my sore throat. I don't want to take the antibiotic and then I'm crying. I just want to go to sleep. I won't take the antibiotic which means I'm lying about the sore throat which means I have to go back to my bed. For now anyway, maybe I can sneak back into his bed without him noticing. Fuck antibiotics, give me a sleeping pill! Maybe it's hereditary. My Mom was like that when she was a child and my uncle too. Now I can't sleep any other way than alone.

rituals

There is a point in the seventh grade when I think about suicide. I get all after-school special-y about it. This is something that teenagers go through. I ask Tara if she ever thinks about. I'm trying to stand out amongst the rednecks and hillbillies with my depression - suicide is so urban and sophisticated. Being alone inside the house after school before my father comes home, I can process the horrors of the day. After escaping the last possible opportunity for harassment for the day, getting off the school bus, now I'm ready for my breakdown. I take out the serrated kitchen knife and run it across my wrists. It's the isolation, I can't breathe. I know I won't do it, but take comfort in the option. And as long as I have the option I can keep going. I know my existence doesn't have to be like this, but I'm trapped for now. I take a few sips of my father's vodka to be dramatic. I was never into getting drunk even back then, but apparently I am into wallowing in my misery. It's the fear, never being able to relax, never feeling safe. Sitting on linoleum floor in the kitchen, leaning against wooden cabinets, wanting to hide, to disappear, I put the knife down. The insanity of being harassed and never fighting back, hiding it, being ashamed of it, never talking about it to anyone is hurting me. I'm living two lives now, both bleak. There's no help, no hope, not even a glimmer. Sometimes I pray before I go to sleep that when I woke up in the morning everything that I have known to be my life will actually have been just a dream. TV helps. I watch Oprah everyday after school. I put a frozen burrito in the microwave before the show starts. I eat a Little Debbie snack cake while I wait for my burrito to be done. I drink nothing but coca-cola, day after day. I take my burrito to the living room and eat it in a blur of gagging despair while I watch Oprah.