Burrs on Cotton

      Sometimes I wish that my ceiling was painted to look like the sky, or that I had one of those alarm clocks that projects the time. This way I would have something to look at, something to distract my brain from its thoughts, my body from its pain, and my emotions from their storm, so I could sleep at night. 

       I cannot help but to lay there, watching the ceiling, letting the thoughts I've been holding off break down the dam and begin to flood my mind. Some of those thoughts live in my memory just long enough for me to grasp, then they float away along the current, never to be known again. Others latch onto me like burs on cotton, the more I try to move around them the more attached they become, carrying on into the next day, waiting until I am strong enough to tear them from my sock. Those thoughts are normally of peers. Their actions, their words. How I responded, versus how I should have responded, and acted.

      Turning, moving, readjusting does nothing to ease the pain coming from the knife wedged in my hips, and the shrapnel in my back. Pacing the house once everyone is asleep tends to drive the objects a bit deeper, yet I still try. Laying down after my short walk relieves some of the pain, at least for a speck of time, then it returns, the speed and determination of it depends on my activities of the day, the drugs I took to sedate it, and the mother natures choice of weather.

      Pulling the blankets over my head does nothing to hide me from the impending storms. The hurricane of missed moments, opportunities to be kinder, to have done something better with that moment. The earthquake of regrettable words and actions, the times where if I had said something else, or walked away from a situation, I might not have hurt myself or others quite so bad. The eruption of disappointment in myself, of realization of how much better I could be, how much different I want to be, but I cannot reach that person. They are too far out of reach, drowning in the burning lava. But that person is me. I am drowning in my emotions, and burning in my self hate.

      My thoughts distract my relaxation, my pain distracts my comfort, and my emotions distract my rest. When sleep is finally within my grasp, I take it gratefully, only to experience its soft embrace for a few hours, because the time will soon come when I have to face the world again, face the cause of my sleepless nights.