This is when things are the worst. In the morning when I wake to find my body has been pap'smeared of soul, of life. Like some giant fucking ice'cream scoop has hollowed me out, leaving nothing but this twitching shell.

These are the times when you're most alone. Surrounded by blackness and the sound of your own breathing. Out of rhythm. Quick and shallow then deep and slow. All smelly gas like a bloated and rotting carcass.

But the deep breaths don't satisfy. Fall just short of that point where the wind hits the back of your throat, telling you that it's time to breathe out again.

I am all bones and skin and hair. I am all sweat and spit.

These are what I call my morning tremors.

And I feel organ'less, like nothing inside me is doing what it should. Like my heart and lungs and liver have gone out for lunch. Like they've marched single'file right out my asshole, dragging everything else with them. 'Kidney, you comin? Intestine, c'mon now'.

The only organ whose presence I feel is in my head. This is my brain's time to shine. Time to rise above. Step forth to the podium and deliver. And deliver it does ' throbbing and pulsating like a cartoon heart, projecting a slideshow of all my greatest fears, all my problems, all that's fucked up about my world onto the back of my eyelids.

Click, there's Dad. Click, there's Mum. Click, there's me and Fiona at the beach. Click there's my shit'can life. Click, there's my shit'can job. Click, there's black. Click, there's my shit'can friends. Click, there's this shit'can world. Click, there's black.

And I lie on my back and stare up at the roof and listen as a breeze whistles in my window and my fan sends it flapping around the stark white walls of this room. But this doesn't make it any better so I roll on my side and stare at a mark on the carpet. And then onto my back again. All this within the time it takes to say 'is there no way out?'

This is what I imagine drowning to be like. Watching the flicker of light on the surface above speeding away from you as your inside organs start packing up. Hauling in big dramatic mouthfuls of air but getting nothing but salty water. Your body twisting and convulsing.

And my cotton sheet is cold and soaked with sweat and I cast it off, leaving me naked on the mattress. And I stare down at my dick and wonder if rubbing one out will make it better. Make this all go away.

But my body tightens, contracts around me, pulling my legs up to my chest and I am naked and in the fetal position. Shivering and clammy cold, my body glistening with sweat.

And for an eternity this is me. This shipwreck. Twisting, turning, breathing, sweating. Until a great gash of light jumps through my window, brightens my room and it's time to rise.

It's hard to be enthusiastic about the day ahead when this is how it starts.

Once, when I was 8 years old, I rose in the middle of the night from my single Astro Boy sheet and my leprechaun dreams to go to the bathroom. My father heard noises, got up and found me in his office pissing on his chair.

I filled it up well good. Pooled that sour yellow all over that seat until it overflowed and drip, drip, dripped right onto that lino floor.

And I pissed like a little boy pisses. My flannelette pajama pants around my ankles, the front of my shirt clenched in a ball held tight around my belly button. My tiny white ass soft as silk, hanging out.

And this man bit his tongue and with his clenched fists tight by his side, coerced me, encouraged me back to bed without uttering a word.

When I woke in the morning and, staring at my father across the breakfast table, asked why his chair was out in the front yard, I saw veins in his eyes.

When he brought it back in two days later and I asked him why his office smelt funny, I saw white in his knuckles.

And forever after, when I looked in his window and saw him sitting on that chair I saw a road map of new lines on his face.

Of course we weren't in this shitty apartment back then. Back then when we were a family.

That was then. This is now.