FuNcTiOnAl

FuNcTiOnAl

"Swallow the gun, take a shot, let it rot in your stomach, constantly stumbling… whether or not you remember it"

-Ex-Creations

I woke up this morning glad to greet the day, and horrified at how I felt. I swallowed a few innocuous pills and drove to work, too sick and too late for breakfast. My face felt bloated and dry, like a flag-proud declaration of a flagging man, but no-one seemed to notice. I wasn't sure I should even be operating a motor vehicle, everything crowding close in the most unsound way, but I wasn't drunk - I'd slept that off.

No matter how long I do this, no matter how well I strategize my night, it seems as if there is always a sting come morning. I could drink a gallon of water, it won't make a difference, because of how far I go and how much time I allot myself; too far - and never enough.

And I will not ignore the growing trend, I will acknowledge the problem. But it seems to me that when I was younger I had harder mornings and blacker nights. A part of me calls this improvement, another part calls it merely learning to function.

Is there a word besides the word in my head for a person who goes to buy beer as soon as he is legally allowed, at 7 am, when he has to be asleep by 9 at the latest? When he has already been up all night, and this is not his first round.

Is there a word for the person who is writing this very sentence at 9:08 am?

I'm looking for a word, any word more charitable than the one on the tip of my tongue. Call it my momentary stupor, but I can't think of one.

That man, who has his night, whose night stretches deep into the morning, who goes to sleep like a slab of stone, the dreamless sleep of stone, of bricks, and wakes up so broken and bruised and bloated - but always on time - and painfully pulls his walking corpse from the bed and into his car, and makes it to work - always on time - and works his shift in physical agony, mental agony, for all of the ghosts catching up to him. Who works his shift as well as anyone, despite it all. And by the time he wobbles back into his car, bone weary, is dreaming of a stop at Plaid for a few more, only because he has nothing to put him to sleep.

The word I dread is on the tip of my tongue, I am about to say it except, something else has just occurred to me, a different, more charitable word. Call it the spark of this, my last final tin soldier, but it feels right in the moment, which is all I have left to me now.

That word is functional.

Yeah, I'm functional. I get my shit done. At all the photos of family gatherings, you can see me grimacing; I'm there. I go to work, I do my job, and when I am left alone - and I am alone - I do what I can, but…. It all seems so easy when I'm not there, when I have something to distract me and I promise myself "not tonight, Satan," and it all seems so simple. Only, when I'm there… I have nothing, nothing but myself.

And I have heard - have told myself - every possible conclusion to a life like this. I have explained to myself over and over, have admonished myself, set limits, made grave declarations of self-to-be-inflicted consequences. But the funny part is, I can never give myself a tastier carrot or a harder stick than I already kill myself with.

A part of me says I have to stop this. Another, stronger part asks "Why? Not while you're functioning."

Another part says to smoke another cigarette and why the fuck should I care? So I start another cigarette. And even as I write this, I don't really care. When I wake up, then I'll care, but I'll be so swamped in appeasing the physical pain of it, in working, and in my daily existence, I won't give this moment another thought.

Right now, I'm too fucked up to think about it, and later it'll all be body concerns, and I will be so worn out from that, I'll tell myself "I'll just get a little fucked up so I can think straight, then I'll figure it out." And then I will. And when that happens I'll say "Hell, here I am agonizing when this is really the state of mind I'm chasing." And I'll chase it, and end up right back here.

At the end of the day all I can say is I'm functional. I do my best, man. It's not like I'm not trying! But it all seems to happen around me and the one thing I lack is a moment to fucking think.

If I could just think clearly for once, maybe I could figure it out. But it's never clear. I don't know how to make it clear.

I only know how to make it functional.