terrance levinski - d9 - FIN

terrance allen levinski

eighteen

male

district nine

ODAIR

24 HOURS OF NO SLEEP

I was never afraid of the dark. I just developed a profound loathing for it.

It was the thing I was born into. Absolute darkness. The worst kind, where you close your eyes and it looks exactly the same when you open them. The same darkness I see right now as I stare blankly at my ceiling. I was the first and only child, but it wasn't because my parents were poor. No, I was the failed experiment the one who ruined it all the energy sucker who wore out my parents so much that they decided never to have another kid after me. Apologies to all of my unborn brothers and sisters who will never be. Maybe it's dumb to think it's my fault. There's a plethora of explanations: lack of money, small house, old parents. All logical. If it is not mainly my fault, I'm pretty sure it's at least twelve percent my fault. Maybe thirteen.

I haven't changed much from when I was a toddler. Sometimes I would scare my parents by wandering around the house in utter boredom. Sleep never came easy, and when it did, it was always plagued with dreams/nightmares and would be bled through with patches of half awakening. I heard my mother saying she was too tired from me to have another kid one night, before I stepped inside their room to announce, yet again, my sleeplessness. It only took a few nights for them to get thoroughly irritates with my fidgeting whenever I tried sleeping their bed. I slept alone in my room ever since I was five. The stars were my only friends. They winked at me up in the obsidian skies, listened quietly as I told them nonsense through the cracked, dusty panes of my window. On the rare nights where I slept until morning, my parents usually found me splayed next to the window rather than on my spring, poky bed.

My mother got sick when I was fifteen. Tuberculosis. I remember I had to watch as her health slowly deteriorated in front of my eyes. It took a few months It took 65 days ( exactly ) for her to die. She was always more patient with my perpetual insomnia than my father was. The only problem was my mother was one of the reasons I could never go to sleep. My mind could never stop thinking about the blaring uncertainty. The worst part was, I had the best rest for the first time in a long time after she died. She was the loose end the closed, the solved problem that wove some of the fringes in my mind secure.

It has been somber place after. My dad and I were both speechless victims, having a part of happiness ripped from our souls by the mercilessness hands of life.

GO TO SLEEP GO TO SLEEP GO TO SLEEP

36 HOURS OF NO SLEEP

Rambling to myself is the only way to drown out the stubborn buzz in my ears. I tell myself about my mother and father and how they- Terrance, mother is dead. It's just you and father now. With that I am reduced to a pathetic puddle/spill/explosion of tears, to a ball that somehow my tall body can squeeze and bend into. I am grieving again even though I told myself not to. My chest heaves and shakes until my emotions are a jumbled mess inside me, an inexplicable mesh of feelings I can never get rid of. This happens to often I think. My face holds no expression, no hint of the monster that ravages my brain, leaving an acrid, horrible, unpleasant thing left, like a dam on my own rationality. I am nothing if not every emotion, swinging and hopping to the next one like a child with a very short attention span. I can't decide remember if I'm like this all the time. Yes. Even on my good days, I am the ugly outcome of melancholy and frustration and happiness jammed into a blender.

Socializing is such a task, I don't realize realize is the wrong word understand why people even bother. It is much easier to sit, lips untouched by the foolish words that would involuntarily pop out of my mouth. I find that I, myself, am a much better audience than anyone else could ever be. The mirror gives me a face to look at and eyes to meet so that the strings of nonsense that resound in my ears are detached and odd. I don't even associate the person staring back at me with myself. I find him much better company than I could ever be.

I do foolish things. I don't think, I don't process. I am a reckless mistake waiting to happen. Maybe it's the short supply of sleep messing with my logical thoughts. No one could really say I intentionally got myself in trouble, but one thing was a true fact: I was a troublemaker. My emotions have always gotten the best of me, causing me to get in fights with boys in my school, or having drowsiness drive me to say dangerous things about the capitol. I react on impulse, and all those impulses are usually shit bad/worrisome/literally the worst.

PLEASE GO TO SLEEP GO TO SLEEP GO TO SLEEP

48 HOURS OF NO SLEEP

Under my dank, swampy eyes are dark bags, hanging under them like unfriendly, unfortunate reminders. A wispy beard sometimes grows over my face because I simply forget to shave it off in the mornings. The hair on top of my head is always tousled, messy. The result of my perpetual carelessness My body is a rusty machine, creaking and cracking and breaking and-is bracking a word? I don't remember. My bones are pushing at my skin, begging people to notice the grooves and caverns and bumps they've pounded into my body. My ribs carve sharp ridges into my stomach, my shoulder blades stick out like sore thumb. I am a skeleton with a poorly measured covering, stretching to the almostalmostalmost breaking point. I stand at 6'0" or is it 6'1"? I am the epitome of malnourishment, I am a pitcher in which a mixture of drowsiness and starvation is filled to the brim.

Perhaps I could be beautiful if the sleepless nights/deaths/ailments weren't etched permanently into my face. Perhaps my brown eyes would be brighter and my small lips would quirk at the edges. Perhaps my hawkish nose and strong brows wouldn't be the only things that stick out on the sharp, angular planes on my narrow face. Perhaps perhaps perhaps. My life is full of perhaps this and perhaps that to the point that perhaps is now just a seven letter word with enough caliber to do absolutely nothing at all. I dwell in all of the perhapses that blast through my life, I bathe in them like I bathe in the nail biting/scream provoking/anger inducing hours where my brain refuses to shut off and my eyes can't stop looking at the stars.

PLEASE JUST GO TO SLEEP GO TO SLEEP GO TO SLEEP