Pain. It seems all my life I’ve dealt with one kind or another. Part of me wants to shut the louder half of me in a little box, somewhere…anywhere, until it's bursting at the seams. Maybe I hope it will kill itself off, polluting its own environment with its own filth, just like part of me always has. The other parts want to ignore it, try to stop it and beat it down, keep it down and destroy that one part, that deceitful, tiny sliver of dark blood that constantly worms its way around my body, choosing to squat repentantly on my head or on my heart.

I’ll tell you something, the pain can be equally great from either organ, either space, but both parts heal differently. Your head makes up excuses, uses logic and ideas to twist away the pain like a sodden shirt you desperately try to dry out. It still takes time, but you get there in the end, usually with the form of some other factor of help.

But the heart, the very center and soul of someone, it cannot heal so easily, it doesn’t forgive so easily, not even when the head asks it to, it refuses, a permanent rebellious teen set on getting drunk that night. Sometimes the very person carrying the very heart that often leads us onto the path of destruction cannot stop it, allowing it to carry them, control them and, ultimately, destroy them. It rages on, like the runaway train on fire in the midnight hours, singeing as it crashes on through the deserted nights. It too can heal, but it takes much, much more stitches of time and tender loving care.

Like bruising, it fades from a deep purple to a gentle brown and the pain lessens with the colour and passion of said lesion. Almost always, however, we need other help, other people and those people are the only people and they are the ones who caused such a mess of your most vital core, then what can you do?

Would you run?? Knowing you could never go back, just get up and crash endlessly on through the night like your runaway train heart or would you stay, bearing the lashings and words thrown at you in disgust. You would think you’d do what was best for yourself, wouldn’t you? But with your head telling to avoid the dangerous moonlit rage and your heart spurring you on into an escape from what has become a fiery hell of torture and damnation, you are torn between your own mind and your own soul. You can’t choose either or neither, because each choice result’s in something negative, something the opposite of what you only wanted in the first place. So, you being torn by yourself, ripped and shredded lay there, taking the only form of help you can find, no matter what it may be.

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Perhaps you crawl to the liquor cabinet, thirsty for something to singe its way to your heart and burn it out because it is causing you so much emotional pain. You figure you don’t want to die, you only want the pain to stop or slow just enough to bear it. People’s faces plead with you; tell you you’re infected with an addiction that cannot be solved by simply drinking more. Soon, they too fade away, blurry voices in a symphony of screams and desires. You find the pain numbed, but all too raw still, so perhaps you now walk, stumbling yourself to the glass cabinet where the little angelic white bottles are kept. You look at the labels closely, looking for the particular words, even though everything seems already hazy, those little white bottles are clear enough to read.

Heavy rock music seems to be playing, its volume increasing, you slap anything to try and switch it off, but it only increases. You find what you’re looking for, re-reading the words three times to make sure it’s correct. You open the bottle, carelessly dropping most of the pills, catching a handful in the waterfall of white and orange checkers. You place several on your tongue and swig from the clear bottle that has stuck by your side for the last few hours like a dear old friend. You laugh, and then cry, raw emotions too confused to show themselves properly.

You swallow, place several more on your tongue and swig more, then swallow again. Blackness fades in and out. Suddenly all the pills are gone, even the ones that were spilt on the floor have disappeared, did somebody clean them up? You raise your hands to your face, finding them both covered in blood, confusion swamps you and the rooms tilts at an incredible angle as you claw your way to stand, most of your weight on the bench. Blood spills off the edge of the marble counter. Not from your hands, but your wrist.

Your hands release a shiny stainless stell dagger, also covered in your blood. The room is humming and you know you’re literally that high that this will be your last trip. The room vibrates, almost like an earthquake, you feel the ground shake underneath you and your legs collapse, you fall. You don’t feel your head hit to ground, but you hear it, the crunch of bone echoing in your ears, but even they feeling like they are wax that is melting at this very moment. You open your eyes, watching the light above you as it dances about in numerous random patterns.

The bottle rolls in view and you turn your head, groaning from the increasing thud of pain in your head or that you’re bleeding, your getting far too gone for notice much now. Your hand slaps at the bottle, getting it on the third try, you bring it close to your face, which seems to take forever. Why do you feel so tired?

The writing focuses suddenly and you cough, suddenly feeling like your on fire, like flames are crawling hungrily up your skin, consuming the flesh as they go. Your throat feels so dry, like sandpaper on sandpaper. You suddenly let our screams, screams of agonizing pain and fury. You did this to forget the pain, to stop the pain, but yet here lay a greater pain. The sweet, fading pain of death.Your limbs flay uncontrollably and your mouth foams, your breath quickens and your heart is pumping incredibly fast. Your eyes roll in their very sockets and you cannot think. You cannot breathe, you can only feel pain. You thought you were in hell, you were, but this is a new hell. A deeper, greater, far more painful, hell.

Your last breath escapes your body. You make no attempt to suck new air back into your collapsed, burnt out lungs. Your muscles contract and the light on the ceiling becomes brilliant and bright, blocking out everything. The pain fades, but so does your pulse. You didn’t want to die; you just wanted to stop the pain. You simply wanted to sleep, a night of undisrupted dark sleep.

Your hands twitch, tighten into fist, then relax.

Your finally asleep, yet you shall never awake.

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Master Chris Likam

For treatment of dependent insomnia.

Take 2-3 times a day, dependant on symptom strength.

Take with food, preferably within two hours of a meal.

Do not take with ANY other medications.

Do not take with alcohol.

Consult your doctor If symptoms persist


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