Thursday, April 19, 2018

4:29 AM An Account of What No Sleep Will Do in the Middle of the Night


I always find my head swimming with unwelcome depressive thoughts. Like little fishes, they hide amidst anemone until they think I’m gone, having drifted away into the ocean of sleep.

But here they are, more punctual than a newly tuned clock. They crawl back, shadows in a world that has had the lights turned out again. The light does keep them away for a while, yes, but never are they truly gone. Fear is an ever-present entity, and with anxiety and panic, it forms the holy trinity.

I’ve never known why they come. I haven't  got the answers, nor have I figured out how to get them to leave. When did I give permission to enter my house? When did my mind lower its guard just enough to let them pass, and what did the rest of my body do to stop them? Nothing, I’m afraid. They don’t have the answers either. If this is a class or a test, I’m surely failing.

How is everything so loud when silence is all around me? Where does the noise come from if nothing is making the sound? How am I to cover to my ears when the scream comes from beneath them, beneath bone and skull and brain? Oddest yet, I have no idea what the screams are saying. It is just noise.

Sleep—why are you running away from? Why do you play this game of tag with me? I don’t want to play, but I still find I’m “it” every time. Please let me forfeit. Please let me rest.

Unrest has been planting seeds in my head. I am left to weed while I should be sleeping. Just like farmers get up at 5 AM to plow the fields, I too am up at dawn, reaping what unrest has sown, only I don’t want what’s produced. Rotten thoughts and poisonous roots will kill anything that’s still holding on.

I feel at this very moment, that if someone were to press me into a ball and compress me, harder and harder, I could turn into a diamond. My heart and head have gotten a head start—they feel like rocks inside me. Maybe if my body turned into a diamond, I would be worth something.

It’s been hard to keep the faith that there isn’t something wrong with me. Normally, your head and heart work against each other in matters of life, but they have teamed up on me and now they say the same things. They both whisper about me and have inside jokes. My heart tells my head what I have given up and my head laughs that I was so stupid to give pieces of myself away. They both think I’m stupid, that I am hopeless. I doubt my kidneys or spleen will suddenly back me up in this war. All my other senses fail me too, and I am left unprotected, standing in the middle of the battlefield—armor-less and exposed.

You are not truly alone until your body has abandoned you.

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