The countdown

 The countdown begins, An hour and twenty till the kids get up. She sleeps too, but lightly, as the twins nurse all night. She's a strong one, and I'm proud to have her by my side. I sit alone on the couch in another red-eyed sleepless daze. I write my fears and woes and worries that trouble me when I'm sober. Ha! When I'm sober? Today is the first of many that I spend trying to face the world as it is without the sleepy haze of weed or NyQuil or Xanax or Vicodin or Klonopin or ativan or Seroquel or alcohol, or even coffee with tons of sugar.
           Oh, and I am afraid. Afraid of my choices to continuously put a drug induced veil over my mind because it feels like the light is too bright.Even as I sit and write these words I have 250mg of Seroquel, half of a jagged little pill, waiting to rescue me to the world of sleep.
            Will sleep ever come without a price? without a guilt? I remember being so young, the fight, the thrill of staying awake. The fear of falling asleep. See, when you sleep, things happen. When you sleep, you're awakened by the sting of a wet leather belt on your ass cheeks and back as you lay on the same mattress on the floor as your sisters. The terror of hearing their cries from the same sting. The hand wielding the belt too fucked up from drug or drink to know he was hurting his own.
            A hurt learned at six. This is just my own, I can't fathom what was learned through my sisters eyes of ten and four. But this is what we know. This is why we stay awake until sleep comes and robs you of consciousness in some random spot on the floor, half underneath a table or chair, or hugging your knees on a stairwell. Sleep is not my friend.
            Not many are. My friend, that is. I am a weird one, or at least to my belief I am. I read too much. My feet stink, and my clothes don't fit correctly. I's an ugly boy. Who loves ugly boys? Mama loves ugly boys. I wanted to be held so much. A scared boy with sad eyes, a bowl haircut with the duck tail, and a silver tooth. And I'm an 80's baby. Not because I can recall pop trivia, there wasn't a lot of t.v. for us unless we're at Gramma and Grampas house. They watched Novellas that I understood the Spanish in, until I wanted to forget that part of me too.
            No, I am an 80's baby because I grew up watching little peanuts of crack rock tear the people who were supposed to love me, to love US, apart. I'm an 80's baby because I grew up believing that money was brown and blue bills, and quarters. I'm an 80's baby because I grew up at the dining room table watching games of spades and drinking and lying and yelling. I learned that shit. I earned that shit.
            The morning sun brings a new approach to the life I've tried so hard to leave behind. The jagged little pill will find its nesting home in a mess of bowels, but not my own. it will dissolve lonely at the bottom of a septic tank. and as the sun rises higher in the sky, I find myself high no more...