Paranoia (Zayn Malik) (editing)

Chapter 1: Luna Ghost

Insomnia is technically a sleep disorder. So I've been told, anyway. I don't have the capacity- or the time- to fact check that myself.

I consider it torture of your own brain's design. The self-sabotage of your control system fucking you over in one of the cruellest ways possible. It is the feeling of knowing you're going to die, but death never comes. It is more than no sleep, it is no rest. No time for your mind to sort out the events of the day, sift through the noise and decide what you actually need to hear, to retain. No clarification on what has actually happened and which parts are the blank spaces filled by fabricated events of my own creation. My mind can be an asshole like that, it likes to watch me running through my latent thoughts subconscious brain, trying to decipher what is real and has been so carefully painted like it is real that I just might believe it. I spend most days running on empty, or as close to empty as humanly possible. I'm sure I've said 'hello darkness, my old friend' more times than Paul Simon at this point.

Sometimes it's bearable, the silence surrounding the groaning of my dying subconscious - it doesn't do well on no sleep, but neither does the rest of me, so it really ought to stop complaining - sometimes it feels like being in a calm ocean, slowly pushing me further into the nothingness of its vast expanse, water gently lapping against my sides making it impossible to turn off completely, but at least the sun is warm on my skin. Sometimes it's much worse. The water is too cold, freezing me until my bones are brittle, ready to crack, and my heart has slowed to the point that you could almost consider me dead, but it won't let me go - die - slip into the peace of sleep, or death, whichever comes first.

Four AM knows all my secrets, and I know none of it's. I'm not sure if the shapes I see are really people watching me, or just the abstract shapes of my furniture transforming, thanks to the darkness of night and my groggy brain. This means, as well as being best friends with sleepless nights, I am shackled to paranoia. The uncertainty of my reality. And I would let it take me, the feeling of vulnerability, but I swallow it like I swallow my bile when I'm sick for the same reason. I don't have the time. The luxury of being an unoriginal teenager swimming in an ocean of hopelessness isn't extended to women like me.

Non-white orphaned children of immigrants who have dependent siblings. Well, mostly orphaned. My mother died of cancer five years ago, and my father's will to live died the same day. But what do I know? Maybe my mother's love is at the bottom of a bottle, at the end of a line of cocaine, maybe that's why he keeps arriving at both constantly.

When I walk down the school hallway, I'm almost shocked no one calls the police to report the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, because I certainly feel like patient zero, and I'm not entirely convinced I'm not groaning as my feet drag me to my locker, and honestly the more I think about it, the idea of a new brain in my system is kind of nice. The throbbing of my head is not new to me, my head hasn't been clear for four years, but it is particularly grating today. Night shift. I've worked it for three nights in a row - it's not like I was doing anything else with the time - but it's definitely less restful than counting the chips of paint on my bedroom ceiling. 

I spot Zoey - admittedly my best friend, and even though that's true, it feels like a default given she's my only friend - at the other end of the hallway. Her brightly coloured curls are hard to miss, harsh on my eyes so early in the morning. She notices me too and smiles, parting her plump lips and baring her perfectly white teeth, the kind of white you only achieve when you can afford private dental care.

"Hey, Luna. How was last period?" She beams at me, her somewhat joyful nature juxtaposing her aesthetic choice of halfway to a goth, a look she no doubt picked up to piss off her overbearing mother. Her hair, dyed black with neon green tips, is a particular point of contention for the two, not that the multiple piercings in her ears, nose and one underneath her lower lip did much to help, I also theorise the nipple one would be a problem if her mother knew.