08th May, 2018

Here I am, many months on, weeks ago I started paroxetine again to remove my descent into uncontrolled thinking and negativity. I am an existence without feelings, a sense without sway, an exhibition without mood swings; commenting only on the events as they swing by.

My head is filled with empty noise, floating through the ether as the day’s reverberations slowly dissipate out my ears, out my nose, out my eyes; food and taste keep my mouth closed. I want to sleep, I want the sleep to last, the night to take my mask and only remove it upon the later hours of morn when work bids my bones to gather some sprite and move from my bed to employment. There I hustle the hours for money to compliment my bank account. It is a means.

The early hours – one o’clock, three o’clock – have had me waking before the alarm’s six o’clock disruption. I wonder if my brain is registering time to sleep on my usual clock, and I wake to attend to that time of the artist’s burial. But I usually make my bed to sleep in it when I arrive back from work as an hour or so to tear away the tiredness of ten hour shifts. And then I rest at the later hours of night – nine o’clock, ten o’clock – before the early morning hour call wakes me up to go back to sleep again. The sleep interruptions are rough, but Sunday’s day of rest and extra sleep as the day passed made up for some of it.

I have hope of a new abode. This room that is rent but not a home has done its duty, for the summer holiday I gave myself took me through half of my novel, and I hope when this season’s work of cardboard box building battles for the kiwifruit and apple orchards ends I will have a chance to take up that paper and pen, keyboard typewriter, and return to where I left off again.

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He flicked the lighter, staring into the small flame that ignited. “She’s a hard worker, unlike Jansuell. He hasn’t shown any interest in anyone other than himself.” The flame went out leaving a trail of smoke in the air. “And those damn notebooks his parents left behind.”