chicken

for most of my childhood and early adulthood i journaled religiously. and daily. i recorded everything that happened to me. no matter how trivial. no matter how mundane. i have hundreds and hundreds of pages of spiral notebooks, pages covered front and back, cover to cover detailing the conversations and nuances of ten years or more of my life.

and then at some point, i stopped. and what i realized quickly was that if it wasn't written down, i didn't remember it. that hasn't changed. i have coping mechanisms in place for the workplace (lots of lists, notes and emails), but even still the holes in my memory are a handicap at times. and the rest of my life? well, it's a blurry fog.

it makes me weary. or maybe that's the sleepiness making me weary. hard to tell which comes first.

chicken.
egg.
chicken.

though i don't remember much, i do remember writing about this earlier in the year. about my decision not to take the affordable amphetamine and my inability to take the cost prohibitive wakefulness drug. i wanted to take a more holistic approach. even a psychological approach.

and i've tried that. i really have. and here i am nine months after the sleep study and 30 years from my first memory of lapsed memory and i'm still sleepwalking.

i'm ready to wake up. i'm ready to wake the hell up.

i'm reconsidering what i'll do to make that happen. i don't know that i'll feel good about taking a drug daily. i won't be a proud pill popper. but when i consider the alternative, when i live the alternative, i think to myself, 'this may never end.' sure i can self-medicate myself awake for brief periods of time. i can write lists and journal compulsively. i can make charts and put rubber bands on my wrists. but at the end of the day..week..month..year, i probably won't remember even half of it.

i've always been a dreamer. i live more in the future than the past. i let go of the painful memories and forgive easily. that's the silver lining. but this is my life. i only get to live it once. and i want to remember it.

d: the luxury of nostalgia
b: i'm expert at coping mechanisms
g: a life i don't want to forget