Tired Cause I Got No Sleep

My headache from no sleep sits at the front of my mind, a dull and aching pain that

prefaces everything with Not this again. It’s at the front of my mind instead of the back where all

my other worries are, and I wish it was there cause I have enough to worry about, but instead

I’m confronted with a frontal headache cause I’m tired cause I got no sleep.

Caffeine only does so much to cure a tired headache. My sixth grade teacher used to

always say a good coke cured a headache while racing between breaks to grab one from the

school vending machine, and while I love a good coke, 8 AM is too early to have a caramel

color concoction. I want to like coffee but I can’t stand the taste. Earl Grey is fine, though I’m

starting to like those shitty gas station French cappuccinos more, the ones that taste purely of

sugar and cover up the espresso. Is that machine finally working again? Hell if I know, and I

can’t be bothered to check. Either way, a cappuccino will only get me through the day. It won’t

cure me from my headache cause I’m tired cause I got no sleep.

God, I want to take a power nap.

It’s what I need, but I’m too lazy to sleep, which seems like an oxymoron but it makes

sense in my sleep deprived mind. What I actually need is a break. A real break. Not a “sit in my

room and procrastinate for two hours because I’m burnt out from being burnt out” break. But

here I am instead, tired, frazzled, and irritated with a headache cause I got no sleep.

Maybe I’m dehydrated. Dad insists on looking for solutions to everything before I down

any pain medications. Tylenol, acetaminophen, I don’t care--I’ll probably jumble up all the words

anyway before I give up and end the sentence with “Oh, whatever.” I’ve been dehydrated lately,

but that’s probably cause I’ve been running around everywhere chasing the breath I haven’t

caught yet, and I’m now sleeping for hours and hours but still wake up exhausted with a mouth

drier than the Gobi Desert and a headache cause I’m tired cause I got no sleep.

I wake up one morning, groggy and up later than late, plop down from my bed, and

stumble to my mirror. My hair, despite being in a bonnet the night before, stretches in ninety

different directions because it never stays in place, or maybe that’s just because I’m on day

eight hair and washday was supposed to be yesterday and I keep pushing off the process. It

looks like shit but I’ll pull it back anyways.

I push back the frizzy bangs and look at my dark amber--screw it, they’re just plain

brown black--eyes, remembering how, in all of Taylor’s love songs, she wakes up next to fresh

sea blue eyes and not some tired ass dirt brown ones, once vibrant but now dull from the weight

of no sleep. They’re sagging, pulled down by the bags puffing them up--or maybe you didn’t see

the bags cause they’re surrounded by dark crop circles--or maybe you didn’t see those cause of

all the extra folds and creases lining them.

Maybe it’s the fact that these tired eyes realize that they’re actual adults now and this is

gonna be something they have to get through for the rest of their lives, but they don’t really feel

like adults, they don’t really feel like they have an ounce of independency when they’ve been

clinging on to dependency for the last two years and then have it abruptly end and stripped

away. Maybe it’s the fact that these tired eyes don’t want to obey the mind when the body tells

them it’s time to close one way or another cause they feel like they wouldn’t be of any use in the

first place.

The body will tell you it’s time for bed whether you want it to or not.

Another Thursday rolls around with three alarms in a row in fifteen minute intervals. I’m

stuck with this headache cause I’m tired cause I’ve got not sleep.