Sleepless

They say you should get up after a little while. You never get to sleep lying in the dark worrying about it. They say it's a guilty conscience, a lot on your mind. They say a lot of things.

I tell them I can't sleep on a full moon. They always look at me incredulously when I say that, but it's true. I can tell if the moon is full without even looking out the window because I get a buzzing and throbbing in my head, and when I feel that familiar feeling and hear that blood rushing in my ears, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'm going to sleep that night.

I don't think the moon is full tonight though. Too lazy to look out the window and find out and too pissed off to care if they think I'm strange when I say celestial objects keep me awake. Let's face it: I can't stand where fate has thrown me, moon or no.

I never thought I'd find myself back in the landlocked shithole that I left so many years ago, when I was different and the world was so much less what it's become.

A lot of things have I happened that prayed never would, the kind of things that startle you; the things you steer your mind away lickety-split when it wanders too near. The unthinkable things you're secretly relieved happen to someone else.

Situations conspire that make you move to the last place in the world where you'll ever find a kindred spirit, and yet you're lucky to be there -- by god where's your gratitude you little prick?

San Francisco was no paradise, believe me I know it wasn't. It wasn't any one thing, how could two decades anywhere be anything but life? And yet now, I can't tell you two sticks about my old life except it's so full of ghosts they knock me down while I walk and I think it's the wind.

Nobody here cares about ghosts, at least the ones I'm talking about. Sometimes on a moonlit night, con artists and storytellers are able to stand them up and blow enough goo into them so that they come alive again, but I think you have to be something to do that: Braver than I am. Smarter too.

And yet, sometimes being pissed off and sleepless makes you do crazy things, sometimes it fills in for the weaknesses.

So, I'd like to write a long letter to all of those ghosts, some of whom are me at an earlier age, laughing at what I've become, some are friends who are dead, enemies who should be, and some who are only dead to me now.

I'd like to write and write and take the rest of my life to finish. When I'm done, I'll grab one of those old ghosts and blow a little color back into their cheeks, only so I can pretend again and reminisce and talk to someone besides myself. Someone who was there, who didn't stay behind for twenty-two years to gape incredulously at lost spirits whose last resort is to return, haunted by ghosts and moons and restless nights.

And then I will be one of them, waiting for the next sleepless soul to come and talk to me. But for now, I'm awake. Very awake.