And the Truth Shall Set You Free

Then again, maybe not.

Non-fiction.

Tossing and turning in bed for hours until I give up sleep for a lost cause, I emerge from my room to haunt the house’s hallways, eerily empty in the dark. The house seems sad and lonely without the daytime’s buzz of activity. My family is quieter than most, but never this quiet. Parents and siblings all tucked in and sound asleep.

My days are all turned around and try as I might, I can’t seem to put things right. My body is weighed down with exhaustion but my mind refuses to give me reprieve. Hours grasping at the sandman in futility but he won’t come as long as my pulse keeps racing with unspecified anxiety. The future lurks hungrily at the edges of my vision waiting to devour me.

Attempting to escape my fate, I disassociate myself from the world around me. I’ve been stumbling around for days in a fugue state, avoiding reality. The tartness of under ripened strawberries is shocking on my tongue, and it seems to me the first real thing I’ve felt in days.

I feel trapped and vaguely panicked, like a rat suspecting that there’s no real way out of the maze. My eyes have started to linger a little too long on sharp implements so I make an effort to avoid being around anything sharper than the butter knife. The small cuts on my arms, long healed, have started to itch. Over and over I trace a crescent shaped scar on my leg. It’s faded almost to nothing. Over four years have passed since I heated a small spoon with a lighter’s flame and took it to my flesh.