*** It’s now the sixth night and sixth day of no sleep. Yesterday I began to act a bit strange at work. Nigel commented that I didn’t look myself. He doesn’t know of course, no one does. I switched off and stopped talking. I’ve never been one to talk things through and explain things, I switch off and enter a state of happiness, an unwelcomed happiness. Nigel must have picked up on this; my jubilant workself that had been released in the past few days, comes as a surprise I’m sure. I’ve met my deadlines and managed to excel more than usual. Congratulations all round. Now it’s another night. I’ve tried different things tonight; I did some work until about one. Then I did some weight lifting, trying my hardest to physically drain myself, force myself
by Joshua Lachkovic
Lost in the Hard Rain
i check the digital clock on my bedside table. Three burning red digits display the numbers five, two and six. I have been without sleep now for the past five days. The day was at the stage when it was no longer so dark you couldn’t see, but there was still no light filling in the spaces to provide a means of interpreting the shapes of objects. Yesterday was still hanging on and tomorrow hadn’t quite begun. I felt lost in between days. I considered those others still awake at this time: the club goers thinking about returning home, workers waking for work, or the other people, like myself, just waiting in a state of unknown; awake for no purpose at all. I look around my room. My eyelids droop and my eyes go soft focus. If I stare at something long enough it merges into something else, as if I was in the depths of a trip. Yet I was so far from that, it was so many years behind me that there was no way it could have been. The lightshade flickered around as if it was dancing and I eventually blinked and snapped out of it. Noise levels increased from the road below, it could be argued that it never died down, but I guess at a certain point you just stop paying attention. I wondered how long this was going to go on, I wondered how long this stage of nothingness was going to continue. I felt sick constantly, yet I hadn’t eaten for days and my stomach felt so empty it was painful. If I thought about food though, the sickness came back and took hold. Most of the night I didn’t even think about anything, I just lay there staring at the pattern on my ceiling and completely ignoring any thought that might enter my head. Time went on, still locked in this stage of morning not quite morning, the same feeling as when flying. When you are in between countries, in between time zones, in between the earth and the sky. You don’t belong to one country; you are infinitely disconnected from existence, disconnected from reality, from relations and friends and disconnected from life.That feeling of flight reminds me so much of the feeling right now, the time between days and in between life. I begin to wonder again, when this will end. I lay there motionless for some time longer. At eight I would have to ‘get up’ and get on with my own life, the life that I pretend is still going on, or at least the life I force myself to believe is still going on.