Running on Nothing

Tired doesn’t cover it. I’ve been moving through Berlin like someone turned the gravity up—crawling the streets at half speed, spacing out at pseudo-hipster parties while the same four-on-the-floor beat cycles through for the fifth time, unable to hold a thought for longer than a minute. At any given moment, with no warning whatsoever, I could just stop. Tip over. Sleep on the pavement. Adiós.

The doctor says nothing’s wrong with me. The doctor is wrong. I’ve been mainlining Doppelherz vitamins—the kind with lutein, specifically for eye health, as if my eyes are the problem—along with liters of energy drinks, fruit, hot coffee splashed directly on my face, cold water splashed directly on my face, and cutting out the evening jerk-off sessions on the theory that conservation might help. The combined effect is roughly equivalent to giving a sinking ship a bucket. Zero. Less than zero.

I can’t spend every night watching documentaries about Columbine or World War II concentration camps just to keep my brain too disturbed to sleep—that’s not sustainable and it has diminishing returns. What I can tell you is that while writing this, my head hit the keyboard twice, and at some point I came back to consciousness quietly humming the theme from a cartoon I haven’t thought about in twenty years.

So. If anything I’ve ever written here has meant anything to you: help.