Four AM

“The world ultimately is what we say it is.”

― David Friedrich Strauss

Four AM. That's always the time when my brain decides to taunt me, and throw me in the woes of what may or may not be an alternate reality. It happens every morning- night, whatever you consider the feverish hour of Four AM to be.

Let me start from the beginning. My name is Milo, that's the name my estranged mother gave me- she had to choose the name all by her lonesome, as my "father", had ditched my mother the moment she presented her parasitic phenomenon (her pregnancy) to him. At least, that's the narrative she's always run with. She'd never let me forget it either.

"Do you know how difficult it is to take care of you, all by myself?" She would constantly say, verbatim, as if it was my fault that she picked a crappy sperm donor. "God, you look just like him", is another quote I can recall by my late mother, who shall remain nameless, to remind me of the plight I was in her otherwise- "picturesque" (sarcasm) life.

I was an only child. Well, I still am an only child, but I'm not a kid anymore- heh? It was always something people inquired me about, specifically other adults who'd wonder why I'd always be the last kid to be picked up, if at all, from grade school. The parents of the other kids would usually ask where my parents were, and I'd have to sheepishly respond: "I only have a mom... I don't know where she is", or something to that liking. The parents would proceed to ask me if I had any siblings who could pick me up...

I always thought that was a very dumb question.

After the fourth or fifth time of my mother forgetting to pick me up from sixth grade, leaving me to find my way home (often times getting lost), I realized that I had to become a latchkey kid.

What's a latchkey kid?

Definition: a child who is at home without adult supervision for some part of the day, especially after school until a parent returns from work.

My mother was a drunk, I didn't realize that until about seventh grade. I had found about a dozen bottles of empty bourbon under her disheveled bed. She was passed out, with pills strewn across her ashy night stand. I was quite naive to vices up until I realized that kids in my grade were partaking in the shit that was killing my mother. It all clicked by then.

Some would say I was naive, but I was just lost in my own world. My imagination was always taking me to new worlds and characters- obviously, because my waking life was not exactly stable or fun to partake in.

I grew up in rural Kentucky. I guess you can call me a hillbilly, it was always something I felt subconsciously ashamed of, especially when I moved to New York City at 23 years old- which was ten years ago.

Anyways, I ended up finding myself deep in the woods of my rural town, sometimes up until the dawn of night. I would stare up at the stars and organically find constellations I didn't even know were common knowledge. I thought I was an astronomer. I would befriend the woodland creatures, almost domesticated a squirrel. The whole thing.

I would end up walking home, only to make sure that my mother hadn't accidentally overdosed on one of her various addictions. If I could have lived in the woods, and become a Yeti, I would have. But I cared. I cared about my shitty, negligent mother.

Well, the worst of my fears came true. It was a Sunday night- I forget the date, must have blocked it out... But it was Winter and I was getting cold and morose in my usual hide out. I anxiously walked home, as if some psychic awareness was gravitating me towards my dingy apartment.

I flung open the door, and called out to my mother, who at that time would have been passed out in front of the TV on our alleyway found couch. She wasn't there, however.

"Ma, I'm home!" I hollered, but received no usual slurred response. I went into my mothers room and looked towards her bed. She wasn't in it.

My heart started pounding, palpitating, even. "Ma?" I called out, again, this time with a deep panic in my voice. I walked into the bathroom, and there I saw her. My mother's unconscious body was in the bath tub- naked, pruned and purple. The bath water was a burgundy hue, and her wrists were mangled.

My mother had killed herself.

This may sound weird, but the first thing I did was frantically search for a suicide note. I didn't find one. I just found my dead mother, and a dirty blade on the bath tub's soap bar holder. I don't know what that's called.

"Did you cry?" was what my therapist, Rhonda, had asked me upon telling her.

"Did I cry when I found my dead mom in the bath tub with slit wrists?" I scoffed.

"Yes. What was your initial reaction?"

I stared at beautiful Rhonda bewilderedly. What a strange question, but she was a strange woman.

I didn't cry. I was just shocked, and scared. I wasn't really sure what I would do. I called the ambulance and followed the basic protocol of what had to be done, all alone, such as sign her death certificate and identify her bloated cadaver... yada, yada, yada.

Dealing with a parent's death isn't solely emotional, a lot of it is logistical. They don't really explain that in the movies.

I had no support system, only the imaginary friends in my head that I had created. They grew with me, I had three to be exact.

Logan, Darwin and Mya.

Mya was my favorite.

I managed to get through the woes of my new-found complete independence/loneliness by confiding these three, fictitious entities I have conjured up. I was well aware of the fact that they were made up in my head- yet, they felt more real than the strangers I had come across in my physical reality.

I had been dealing with a lot of people, since the passing of my mother. I had to stand on my own two feet, make money. The life insurance I had taken out on my mother was only enough to cover some very basic expenses- but not to actually live. My mother was an only child, as well, and her parents were dead. I had no one.

Just Logan, Darwin, and Mya.

Mya was my favorite. Probably because she was a beautiful, Eastern European sweet heart. She would speak to me in a mousey, timid timbre. She'd be the one to assure me that everything was gonna be alright, whilst Logan and Darwin made fun of my emasculated sadness anytime I felt overwhelmed by the weight of the world on my feeble, proverbial shoulders.

"It's going to be okay, Milo." Mya would chime in, every time I was about to break down in a manic panic.

From the outside looking in, I was a recluse. I would go to work at my 9-5 stocking job at some generic grocery store, and get back home to ponder in my daydreams. I would have these long winding, eye opening, mind bending banters with Logan, Darwin and Mya- but, from the outside looking in, people would most likely label me as "schizophrenic", or a victim of some multiple personality disorder- which I had become very well versed in through library textbooks, written by some old farts ages ago.

That's why I kept all the conversations, all the moments of brotherhood and kinship and love, all within the confides of my neural pathways. I could never verbalize it, the outside wouldn't get it. The simulation I was forced upon, with the non-playable characters larping as human beings, wouldn't stand to accept the bond I had with... myself.

This went on for years. This secret relationship I had with the three musketeers roaming inside my brain. Each one possessing both desirable and, less than desirable, personality traits. We grew together and independently, I knew that Milo, Darwin and Mya had their own thing going on when I wasn't co-dependently tugging at them for attention. I only knew fractions of what they did when I wasn't around.

It's not like humans have access to 100% of their brain anyway, so I knew that they were hiding somewhere in there that I couldn't reach them. I was fine with that. I needed to fixate on the world that everyone else acknowledged, the world that would keep me physically alive. The world that bounded me to be shackled by consumerism, social constructs and ego.

That's the world I had to pretend I was solely apart of.

I had a hold on what was real and what was my "mind" for about five years since my mother passed. Her name was Linda, by the way. But by about the sixth year, something changed.

I had started to experience sleep paralysis, something I have never experienced before. I would find myself stuck in a waking state, while asleep, and it fucked my head up. I would call out to my friends, but they were no where to be found. Mya, Darwin and Logan stopped talking to me- they were replaced with these intrusive nightmares that always led to me being stuck in an unconsciously conscious realm. In this realm, I confronted my dead mother, my estranged father, my loneliness.

I developed insomnia. I didn't want to sleep anymore- and I didn't. I began to chain smoke 100s and binge drink black coffee. Just to avoid the paralysis. I kept trying to find Logan, Mya and Darwin- I would call out to them but they were no where to be found. I couldn't just pretend that they were there to coddle me, they just weren't- they abandoned me. I created them, and they left me for dead.

I was now... Alone. I felt the panic- it hit me like a freight train. My brain had betrayed me, it was something that shifted the paradigm of my life in a way that I could never forget.

"FUUUUUUCCCCKKK", I yelped out- bawling, whimpering, and panting in a fetal position. I had never been in a fetal position before, not voluntarily, at least. I didn't even react this way when I found Linda dead in the bath tub. The woman who birthed me into this painful "world".

"Where the fuck are you, guys!?" I begged. I begged for my friends to come back to me, but they had just.... ditched me.

I calmed down- maybe they'd appear another day. It's not like they weren't their own individuals, as I said.

That day never came.

It's been two years since I heard from Logan, Darwin and Mya. I have started to sleep more normally again, but each day at Four AM, I find myself waking up- hoping that they will make an appearance back into my life. I think it's because I first met them at Four AM. Perhaps my subconscious was trying to tell me something.

Maybe one day I will meet with them again. Here's to hoping that Four AM means something to Milo, Logan and Mya, like it does to me.

Here's hoping.