Insomnia

One night I decided that I would just do something productive with the time. It would be better, possibly more exhausting than Twitter or Facebook or catching up on my Draw Something games.

It was night of the afternoon where I'd ordered a long black in the cafe.

"At this hour?" The waitress said with a raised eyebrow. It was pretty late.

"I'm tired!" I defended myself, a little embarrassed. It's true, I was tired, and she was right, having that much caffeine that late in the afternoon wasn't a good idea.

Our meals came: filled croissant for me, French toast for him. I ate it as I'd been eating most things that week: without enthusiasm. It was like I'd lost my tastebuds. He said it was because I'd been sick, but I wasn't so sure. I felt as though I'd lost my appetite for life as well.

He was confident that too was due to the illness.

We'll see, I said. It probably wasn't a bad thing that I was excited about consuming only vegetable soup in the foreseeable future.

Afterwards, we drove a lot in a van that strongly smelled of diesel and had a cracked rear vision mirror, picking up bargain couches my sister had bought online from opposite ends of the city. i had motion sickness and anxiety, and confessed that I definitely should not have had that long black.

I wanted my sister to be happy. I could sense her exhaustion, feel her mania. The van was a sad place for me, and yet for her, it was a comfort. She was not alone.

I lay in bed that night, thoughts running through my head, fulfilling destructive browsing habits on my phone. And yet through all the noise, I sensed a silence that wanted to come out, and I knew that if I could just get it out, everything would be okay. For then, this knowledge was enough: the potential for everything to be okay. I knew that one day I'd forget it, like I'd forgotten the birthday of someone I thought I'd never be able to let go of.

The thoughts were liberating.

My sister said that that she believed he was the archangel, like his name. I often believed that this was true; if angels existed, then one had found me.

"I miss you when you are sleeping." I texted him at 1.15am.

2 meters away, his phone buzzed and lit up the room for a second, rivalling the glow of the super moon.

previous - next; thanks, diaryland.