The birds tell you the time: 5:30. You don’t bother with tossing and turning because your wife loathes it. You pad quietly down to the kitchen to sip coffee and gaze blankly out the window at last night’s lingering shadows. Stillness ushers your thoughts to vampires brushing, flossing, gobbling Ambien.
Then it stabs your gut — the furious flutter of butterflies, rudely awakened by the acrid half cup you just gulped. Shortened breath follows. Your lizard brain races below deck to consider the litany of grudges and slights you’ve been collecting, returning to present the ingredients for today’s morning stew.
Intellectually you know it’s unhealthy. Your former shrink suggested launching each day with an inventory of the good things in your life. He said you were tethered to darkness and needed to cope with that. He wasn’t wrong, but somehow a blessing rodeo doesn’t get the blood flowing. No, your DNA requires a lather of stress to start the engine. Somewhere along the line, you decided to document these ridiculous rants. If nothing else, when you finish your inevitable descent into madness, may this be the trail of breadcrumbs that explains it all.