Status: completed
Restless Insomiac
Night
Nights pass me by like fingers on a stationary timepiece. Days and sunlight never embrace my thin, paper like skin because the night’s dark shades keep me in the prison of my conscious mind. I have given up. My bedroom blankets serve as the setting, serve as my den. My run-down, miserable sleepwear serve as the costuming. I play the part of the broken, vanishing bear in the story of my time after dusk as fallen. The demons hidden in the shadows lie in wait and the hues of life and color dwindle but my thoughts churn in circles. I am a whirlpool of contemplations. That is my life. Rather than move and speak, I remain completely still and optionally silent, wrapped in feelings. The world is my emotion and I its anonymous expression.
Lines and spaces suffocate my lungs and congest my arteries like a lilac colored venom. I have accepted my fate. I accept it like the blind accept their vision less existence, like the deaf accept their soundless discussions, like the mute accept their voiceless songs. Never again will peace embrace me. I began my life as one small, blank sheet of paper in-between the printed pages of a novel resembling a telephone book. As the clock ticked my paper was written on. I was written on. Stories of regulated, ever constant occurrences of my life appeared on my paper in permanent, harsh, black ink. Stories of the life and happiness I felt along with the bad moments were all recorded on my paper. As much as I’d like to erase some of the unforgiving lines of marker, I cannot. Not only are they permanent and in my past, they make me who I am today.
As a result questions constantly drown me. I ponder things that most others accept as normality. I surrender and lie down. I wonder about the why and the how but continuously I am forced to accept the because that others absentmindedly throw my way. Words and numbers bob before me like worms, pierced through with hooks, dangling before the cold, lifeless eyes of dead, uncontrolled and floating fish.
I was at one point in my life considered loquacious, a rambler even… However, now I am taciturn and an introvert by my own choosing. I lay in my age-old bed, warm and worn from years of my frail, lonely body lying in the same loose fetal position. The outline of my side meeting the sheeted mattress, my arms bent and outstretched before me with open palms, my legs fixed at seemingly awkward angles with my feet limp at the bottoms of my slack limbs. I lay still with transparent tears rolling down the gentle slope of my cheek to slip across the bridge of my nose and down the other cheek, only to finally fall to rest soaked into the bleached sheets.
“Why?”
I ask the rumored Heavens that linger invisibly above me. High above me, way up into the sky, past the constellations and moons. I question out loud to the spirits that haunt the Earth. I demand answers from anyone daring enough to give me a truthful response.
“Why are things the way they are? Why do we call things what we do? What is it that makes us as people feel the need to rule over one another? How do we survive in groups when we so easily hate each other?”
Silence is my received response. I find no soul courageous enough to reply. I am left with only myself swaddled in my cotton bedspreads with words pouring from my mouth like water from an open fire hydrant on urban streets.
“How was it that we actually came into existence? Is there really a God? Are there really devils and demons? Are we the only planet with intelligent life forms on it in the entire galaxy? What measures intelligence, anyway? How is it that some of us are labeled complete idiots and others astonishing geniuses? Why was I given the circumstances I was born into? Why am I who I am?”
The silence begins to smother me like a pillow over my lips. My lungs struggle and quiver as my mind’s unsustainable need for answers overpowers my body’s ability to function on the most simplest of terms. These hallucinations kill a piece of my mind. Sleep teases me, poking his little wistful head out in the distant corners of my vision only to duck away when my eyes fully turn.
“How is it that some of us can feel the emotions of every single person on this planet when others can feel absolutely nothing? What is true happiness? How is it that most of the people on this planet are suffering greatly due to a lack of resources and so few are wealthy beyond measure? How is it that those who suffer find true happiness in the smallest of things, while those who are wealthy struggle to find true happiness even once? How do I find it?”
The silence begins to forcefully seep into my bones. It presses against my inside walls, the cells of silence break into the cells of my figure. It becomes so silent that I think I hear a remote bell ringing softly a tune unfamiliar to me.
“What is religion? Is it just an excuse to hate someone who is different or is truly a way to worship and guarantee a peaceful time after we pass on from this life? Why were those prophets chosen? Why not someone else?”
The silence breaks down into the oxygen in my bloodstream and swallows it. My mind is congested, my bones are swollen and now my blood infiltrated by the accustomed yet alien silence. The mind is a powerful thing, it can carry on even when a doctor says the body has failed. It can overcome almost any obstacle positioned in its footpath with only the forces of willpower and raw creativity driving it forth.
“Is love a real thing or is it just a simpler name for perpetual lust? Are two people really born with that invisible red thread tied around their pinkie fingers, just waiting to feel the tug from the other end and follow the string? Can love really last for forever or is the fade of feelings inevitable? How do I love?”
The silence becomes me. It fuses itself with each bracket in the latters of my genetic material patterns. The pulsating lack of sound pounds into my every sense I possess. It clogs my ears, it hinders my vision, it numbs my skin, it dilutes my taste buds and it dulls my nose.
“Why am I here? Why does air fill my lungs and blood pump through my body? How is it that I am a person? What is it exactly that makes me human? Is it my compassion? My irritation? What is it? Why was I chosen to be this person, lying paralyzed in bed in the shady style of nightfall because my mind has no off switch?”
Then, just as quickly as the asphyxiating silence came on, it evaporates. My senses become restored back to their full strength. My chromosomes are reestablished. My blood runs true blue and intense red, rather than malicious lilac. The planks of my white, calcium frame are mended. However, my mind remains clouded. I sigh. I weep.
I collapse within myself from the weight of the unanswered questions. I shout out in agony to the empty spirits inside my bedroom. I crumble inside. I suffer. I wait for sleep to come to me in the middle of nighttime’s darkness. I wait for the relief that my peers and family call dreams. I wait for the fears that is brought on by the so-called dreams turning all at once, outrageously sour. I would welcome with open arms fantasied nightmares rather than live the one I have battling for center attention within me.
I feel a faint tingle of warmth first on my toes under the blankets and resting within a pair of worn, old socks. It then moves up to tickle the enveloped skin of my ankles through the layers of cotton casing surrounding me from toe to neck. It’s a shame I’m always too exhausted to react or look to see where the calm fire is coming from.
The flame then moves slowly up my calves, feeling almost like how it would feel to wade deeper into water is how gradually it occurs. Once it’s at my knees I start to perspire the littlest bit. Again, I remain still.
I have felt this before. This steady feeling of being swallowed by bright rays of heat. It has moved up to my thighs now. It snakes up further to my waist and the heat makes me uncomfortable under my fortress of bland thread and long fabric. Too soon. It’s too soon.
“You haven’t answered any of my questions!” I shout into oblivion as the shadows retreat like the cowards they are. “I’m not ready!”
I begin to panic. My heart beats a little faster. My breaths puff out from my lungs sooner than I can suck in the air to fill them. “No,” my mouth remains still but my mind shouts. “No, I need more time!”
Then just as I feel the warmth reach my shoulders another voice screams.
I force my arm out from my cocoon. The cries resemble a banshee in its prime hours of life. My fingers slide over the smooth surface of plastic and I press the button as soon as I make contact. I hit snooze.
Lines and spaces suffocate my lungs and congest my arteries like a lilac colored venom. I have accepted my fate. I accept it like the blind accept their vision less existence, like the deaf accept their soundless discussions, like the mute accept their voiceless songs. Never again will peace embrace me. I began my life as one small, blank sheet of paper in-between the printed pages of a novel resembling a telephone book. As the clock ticked my paper was written on. I was written on. Stories of regulated, ever constant occurrences of my life appeared on my paper in permanent, harsh, black ink. Stories of the life and happiness I felt along with the bad moments were all recorded on my paper. As much as I’d like to erase some of the unforgiving lines of marker, I cannot. Not only are they permanent and in my past, they make me who I am today.
As a result questions constantly drown me. I ponder things that most others accept as normality. I surrender and lie down. I wonder about the why and the how but continuously I am forced to accept the because that others absentmindedly throw my way. Words and numbers bob before me like worms, pierced through with hooks, dangling before the cold, lifeless eyes of dead, uncontrolled and floating fish.
I was at one point in my life considered loquacious, a rambler even… However, now I am taciturn and an introvert by my own choosing. I lay in my age-old bed, warm and worn from years of my frail, lonely body lying in the same loose fetal position. The outline of my side meeting the sheeted mattress, my arms bent and outstretched before me with open palms, my legs fixed at seemingly awkward angles with my feet limp at the bottoms of my slack limbs. I lay still with transparent tears rolling down the gentle slope of my cheek to slip across the bridge of my nose and down the other cheek, only to finally fall to rest soaked into the bleached sheets.
“Why?”
I ask the rumored Heavens that linger invisibly above me. High above me, way up into the sky, past the constellations and moons. I question out loud to the spirits that haunt the Earth. I demand answers from anyone daring enough to give me a truthful response.
“Why are things the way they are? Why do we call things what we do? What is it that makes us as people feel the need to rule over one another? How do we survive in groups when we so easily hate each other?”
Silence is my received response. I find no soul courageous enough to reply. I am left with only myself swaddled in my cotton bedspreads with words pouring from my mouth like water from an open fire hydrant on urban streets.
“How was it that we actually came into existence? Is there really a God? Are there really devils and demons? Are we the only planet with intelligent life forms on it in the entire galaxy? What measures intelligence, anyway? How is it that some of us are labeled complete idiots and others astonishing geniuses? Why was I given the circumstances I was born into? Why am I who I am?”
The silence begins to smother me like a pillow over my lips. My lungs struggle and quiver as my mind’s unsustainable need for answers overpowers my body’s ability to function on the most simplest of terms. These hallucinations kill a piece of my mind. Sleep teases me, poking his little wistful head out in the distant corners of my vision only to duck away when my eyes fully turn.
“How is it that some of us can feel the emotions of every single person on this planet when others can feel absolutely nothing? What is true happiness? How is it that most of the people on this planet are suffering greatly due to a lack of resources and so few are wealthy beyond measure? How is it that those who suffer find true happiness in the smallest of things, while those who are wealthy struggle to find true happiness even once? How do I find it?”
The silence begins to forcefully seep into my bones. It presses against my inside walls, the cells of silence break into the cells of my figure. It becomes so silent that I think I hear a remote bell ringing softly a tune unfamiliar to me.
“What is religion? Is it just an excuse to hate someone who is different or is truly a way to worship and guarantee a peaceful time after we pass on from this life? Why were those prophets chosen? Why not someone else?”
The silence breaks down into the oxygen in my bloodstream and swallows it. My mind is congested, my bones are swollen and now my blood infiltrated by the accustomed yet alien silence. The mind is a powerful thing, it can carry on even when a doctor says the body has failed. It can overcome almost any obstacle positioned in its footpath with only the forces of willpower and raw creativity driving it forth.
“Is love a real thing or is it just a simpler name for perpetual lust? Are two people really born with that invisible red thread tied around their pinkie fingers, just waiting to feel the tug from the other end and follow the string? Can love really last for forever or is the fade of feelings inevitable? How do I love?”
The silence becomes me. It fuses itself with each bracket in the latters of my genetic material patterns. The pulsating lack of sound pounds into my every sense I possess. It clogs my ears, it hinders my vision, it numbs my skin, it dilutes my taste buds and it dulls my nose.
“Why am I here? Why does air fill my lungs and blood pump through my body? How is it that I am a person? What is it exactly that makes me human? Is it my compassion? My irritation? What is it? Why was I chosen to be this person, lying paralyzed in bed in the shady style of nightfall because my mind has no off switch?”
Then, just as quickly as the asphyxiating silence came on, it evaporates. My senses become restored back to their full strength. My chromosomes are reestablished. My blood runs true blue and intense red, rather than malicious lilac. The planks of my white, calcium frame are mended. However, my mind remains clouded. I sigh. I weep.
I collapse within myself from the weight of the unanswered questions. I shout out in agony to the empty spirits inside my bedroom. I crumble inside. I suffer. I wait for sleep to come to me in the middle of nighttime’s darkness. I wait for the relief that my peers and family call dreams. I wait for the fears that is brought on by the so-called dreams turning all at once, outrageously sour. I would welcome with open arms fantasied nightmares rather than live the one I have battling for center attention within me.
I feel a faint tingle of warmth first on my toes under the blankets and resting within a pair of worn, old socks. It then moves up to tickle the enveloped skin of my ankles through the layers of cotton casing surrounding me from toe to neck. It’s a shame I’m always too exhausted to react or look to see where the calm fire is coming from.
The flame then moves slowly up my calves, feeling almost like how it would feel to wade deeper into water is how gradually it occurs. Once it’s at my knees I start to perspire the littlest bit. Again, I remain still.
I have felt this before. This steady feeling of being swallowed by bright rays of heat. It has moved up to my thighs now. It snakes up further to my waist and the heat makes me uncomfortable under my fortress of bland thread and long fabric. Too soon. It’s too soon.
“You haven’t answered any of my questions!” I shout into oblivion as the shadows retreat like the cowards they are. “I’m not ready!”
I begin to panic. My heart beats a little faster. My breaths puff out from my lungs sooner than I can suck in the air to fill them. “No,” my mouth remains still but my mind shouts. “No, I need more time!”
Then just as I feel the warmth reach my shoulders another voice screams.
I force my arm out from my cocoon. The cries resemble a banshee in its prime hours of life. My fingers slide over the smooth surface of plastic and I press the button as soon as I make contact. I hit snooze.