“Even when I took the drugs I realized that this just wasn't fun anymore. The drugs had become a part of my routine. Something to wake me up. Something to help me sleep. Something to calm my nerves. There was a time when I was able to wake up, go to sleep, and have fun without a pill or a line to help me function. These days it felt like I might have a nervous breakdown if I didn't have them.”

“I enjoy having breakfast in bed. I like waking up to the smell of bacon, sue me. And since I don’t have a butler, I have to do it myself. So, most nights before I go to bed, I will lay six strips of bacon out on my George Foreman grill. Then I go to sleep. When I wake up, I plug in the grill. I go back to sleep again. Then I wake up to the smell of crackling bacon. It is delicious, it’s good for me, it’s the perfect way to start the day.”

“Our relationship finally ended when he took to waking me up in the wee hours of the morning when he would go surfing. He thought it might be fun to have me come watch. "Fun for who?" I wanted to ask. I had never asked him to come to Happy Hour and watch me drink.”

“I woke up this morning for three minutes. I rolled out of bed, put on my slippers, and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. That was all I could take. I went back to sleep. I didn’t go back to bed. I just went back to sleep. I slept all day. I sleep most days. I’m asleep when I go to school, asleep when I’m telling the barista which form of caffeine I prefer. It never wakes me up, but I spend $3.50 on it anyway. I’m asleep when my professors are talking, asleep when I go to the store to pick up milk. Sometimes I wake up, but it’s terrifying so I go back to sleep right away. I want to wake up. I want to have a reason to wake up.I brush my teeth every night before bed and wonder how many times I will brush my teeth before they are clean enough to never brush again. I eat lunch and wonder how much more I will have to eat until I’m full enough to never eat again. It’s easy to sleep through routine; I guess that’s why I stay here. I wish I could be done with this life so I could finally sleep properly.”

“Even then, it hurt. The pain was always there, pulling me inside of myself, demanding to be felt. It always felt like I was waking up from the pain when something in the world outside of me suddenly required my comment or attention.”

“Firstly, although daily actions remained constant, the people around me changed. New backpackers would arrive and leave Hat Rin every week, and either said they were staying long-term and did, or said they were only staying for a few days but ended up not being able to leave. The latter was usually the case.The second, more obvious difference between now and then was the nature of my daily routine. For the first time in my life my reason for waking up in the morning was just that: to wake up. If i didn't want to, nobody was saying I had to. If I wanted to go to the beach I'd wake up and go to the beach. If I wanted to mess around with Rick and Dave all day long in the jungle, that's what I'd do. That's not to say I didn't get bored, but when boredom did set in, I just did something else. When you work, you don't have that option.”