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I haven't had fulfilling sleeps in my room lately: some combination of a bad pillow, bad surroundings, stuffy weather, and negative associations (or lack of associations). Lately, especially, sleeping hasn't gone so well.

So a heavy heart at 4 am took me out of my bed in this squat of a room and, the end of my comforter navigating piles of clothing and papers in disarray on the floor, I slept in the living room for the rest of the night. It was nice. It reminded me of the long days after Breakthrough where I would collapse on the sofa. As far as I remember, there wasn't any tossing and turning. Just sleep. Good sleep.

For about an hour, anyway. An alarm clock from upstairs pricked at my unconscious and left me in that grey area between sleep and awake. Constant, insistent beeps. Annoying, but ignorable. The worst part about it was that nobody turned it off, so it kept going for two hours.

And then came the second alarm clock. This time, it came from my dad's cell phone which he charged in the living room for some reason. Short, shrill sound. Turned off before I had the will to get up and shut it off. The only problem was that it came around every ten minutes.

The next sound that came maybe half an hour later was my mom's urging toward my dad to wake up:

Mom: Get up. You're two hours late for work today.
Dad: Not working the company job today.
Mom: Oh. Nevermind.

The alarm clock was still going. What the hell.

There was a time of maybe another hour where I got in some amount of sleep before another sound filled the house: someone was chopping meat. With a butcher knife. They were clearly hacking through bone. It was my sister preparing curry. Ugh. Couldn't tell that one to stop.

My dad decided at it was also a good morning to do the lawn. So then came the gruff, grisly sound of a diesel powered lawn-mower followed by the even worse leaf-blower.

I got up. Stalked my way back into the room I'd been living in all summer. Crawled into the stuffy bed and tried to sleep.

And then the alarm clock in here decided to go off. Where it was located, I had no clue.

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This house is noisy, which was why when I had the option, I chose not to be here. Every sound was a reminder that I was still alive, that I still painfully existed. I've been wanting to disappear, allow every last atom to escape, evaporate every last interpersonal link, and fade, fade, fade.