You Just Never Know

Have you ever been blind-sided by one of those stealth-Christians?

After months spent sharing scotch on nights full of foul-mouthed banter, my good friend and bartender was weighing in his half of The Friend Conversation. You know the one: the life story, greatest fears, all-too-revealing conversation that results in the participants moving from social friends to real Friends, capital F. It was sort of a big deal.

Unfortunately, our bonding hit a little speed bump when he very casually, as if I'd always known, dropped the Jesus bomb on me. It was a shock. I was quite literally speechless. The silence just hung there like a cartoon anvil that was, although I didn't immediately realize it, falling toward my head. I stammered something about being glad it worked for him. He quickly assured me he was a "modern Christian", the nonjudgmental kind.

BAM!

I am a puff of smoke filmed from an ultra-high angle, as I realize the kind of shit you say to your favorite bartender.

***Disclaimer: Despite my well-documented lack of belief, said friend's choice of faith holds absolutely no bearing on my affection or respect for him, nor on my desire to be his friend. I care very much for this person and nothing he believes could change that. I'm not a total asshole.***

Zzz

"Everything feels like a copy of a copy of a copy…""

Insomnia. Oh, insomnia, you bitch. This thing between us is supposed to be a power struggle; you are not supposed to have such an unfair advantage. We used to attack and retreat in regular intervals, but no more. There can be no sport in defeating me this way.

If you don't have chronic insomnia, there aren't words to help you fully understand the toll it takes on your body and mind. You can imagine, but you can never know. You can literally feel your sanity fade away as exhaustion pushes logic further and further into your subconscious mind. It is a kind of torture. No, literally.

Sleep deprivation has been used as an "interrogation technique" by various governments and organizations all over the world. There is currently debate as to whether it will remain an acceptable technique, due to the fact that it has been determined "inhumane and degrading". The former Prime Minister of Israel, Manachem Begin, experienced sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique during his time as a prisoner of the Russian NKVD. I remember reading one of his quotes on the subject and thinking "Oh my god! I know that feeling!". It was so strange to relate so closely to a person I previously knew little about. The quote, which I recorded in one of my many books, was "...a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep. Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it."

Don't I know it...

I Has Arrived.

Well, I'm blogging.

Why am I blogging? ...I dunno. 

I mean, if we're being totally honest (and why not?), I have no idea. It was something between an irresistible urge and a snap decision that brought me here. 

I'm a journaler. (Is that a word? No? I'm making it a word. Take that, Webster, you uppity fuck.) I've always kept a sporadic but emotionally fueled record of my life. Tiny snippets of memories; some preserved in beautiful leather-bound journals, others scattered in yellowing spiral notebooks, and more still, scrawled on napkins, glued onto scrap pages, stuffed in the folds of my favorite books - places I'm sure to return, so that I may find these precious memories and relive them again. 

And I do. I love to find old entries and take a peek into the mind of the younger, less experienced, less jaded version of Aleigh. Often, I find myself feeling the same emotions, reacting the same way to the memory, and I know that I have always been inherently me. Other times, I find myself perplexed at my previous feelings and I have a good laugh at my immaturity or bask in a moment of pride at how far I've come. 

Sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes hilarious, often volatile, these letters from my past-self help me remember, give me perspective, and prove that I was, in fact, alive, on this-or-that date in some lost year of time. Because these scraps of paper form a record of a life that is flying past like so many birds on the wind.

So...I suppose, if I were to listen to myself, I'm blogging to remember. 

Aleigh out.