Peripeteia

Yesterday I had a conversation with one of my oldest friends that lasted way into the early hours - way past my usual bedtime anyway.

This is one of my friends who fall into that special category wherein you can not talk/communicate for a lengthy period of time and yet when you do connect, there are no hangups - no recriminations about why didn't you stay in touch, I won't talk to you if you don't, etc. - and it's as if that long period of radio silence had never existed.

Coming after my last post, it seems sort of like I have no idea what I'm talking about. Having no one, being nobody vs. having these kind of friends who know that there is absolutely no chance of being taken for granted, either way of the relationship. But strangely, it's all the same. 

One topic we went over was the corroded mental states we both were experiencing; both similarly disparaged and yet both on two different sides of a coin. One, the state of perpetual loneliness and the aching void that remains yet unfulfilled despite the growing residual feeling of yearning. The other, the agonies of being in a relationship that seems to be fracturing with a multitude of deeply felt problems.  And somehow in the meeting of minds we realized the commonality that there is never a meadow of permanent happiness (chorus: the grass is greener...). 

Happiness is so fleeting. And it is thus because we have made it so. Fleeting indicates the passage of time. And in this day and age everything is so temporally dependent. Time is money etc., etc. But what if we had the ability to live forever? We wouldn't have this embedded calendar of time ticking away, of the grains of sand depleting, of racing to accomplish x number of things by x units of time. Perhaps we would have no need for happiness; contentment would be king. (Or queen, if you prefer.)

If I lived forever, I would know that I had a tomorrow. I would have a tomorrow to wait for if today it could not happen. I could wait for love forever, because there would be no ending in loneliness. And I would have no end of patience. And patience is that which we all need a whole whopping load of.

I can feel my heartbeat slow down, my very breaths calm at the very thought of taking things slowly, at the idea of a forever forever. And yet, why can't I apply the ideal to our specimen of mortality?

Why am I building up these walls of bricks made of instances of time, effectively barricading myself into a cube of claustrophobia? Why am I resenting everything around me with my own conceived and self-constructed perceptions? I don't know. It is like shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. And blaming everything else that brought me to that moment; without realizing maybe there is something I can be doing differently.  

Again, I don't know. But I've promised myself to put my energies into something productive, and not let them fester and become infected. Maybe if I think hard enough I will discover the way to foreverhood.

Hypnopompic

In the last few days, maybe weeks also, I've been experiencing slight headaches. Not the jackhammering types that render one incapable of any action, but the dull hovering types that just tiptoe their ways in and set up shop before you realize you're squinting and pressing the bridge of your nose or that spot at your temples.

Of course, when I say you, I mean me.

The onset has seemed somewhat inexplicable, with no really specific reason. For a while I had been attributing the headaches to the way the weather keeps changing, cold and hot. I always do get a bit ill whenever this happens, nothing new.

I've always had lots of nights in the past month where I haven't been able to sleep. I'd endured that restless sleep that is probably very well known with many people who are perpetual reminiscers and ponderers. Again, I'm never really sure why exactly some nights I am able to sleep and some nights I'm just tossing and turning and no matter what, sleep never comes until that strange time when it's neither night nor is it yet dawn..

One thing I do know, however, is I cannot sleep with light. Well, actually I can, but the circumstances would have to be just a certain way. Either I'm extremely tired, or I'm in that sluggish lethargy that accompanies me in the afternoons when I've eaten and sitting in a pool of warm sunshine. Siesta mode.

But at night, in bed, in my room, I need darkness. That extra pale light that filters into the room, creeping through the blinds, glowing behind the curtains, reflecting on the walls... once the quintessence of darkness has been diluted, my mind is not able to rest.

Last night, I was actually pretty tired. My eyes had that dry tiredness that simply beckoned at sleep. But despite having drifted off to sleep, in the nocturnal silence, I sensed the footsteps of that approaching spectre before it actually arrived. Even in the dark, I was reflexively squinting my eyes and head to the little light that was magnified by its mere presence. The headache was coming.

That's it. I couldn't take it, I told myself. ENOUGH is enough. I got up and in the dark, eyes still fussily closed, I fumbled about in my basket of  freshly laundered clothes, and found the black pillowcase I knew was sitting there, and tied myself a blindfold.

WHAT a difference. I cannot tell you what an amazing night of sleep I had. I have this tendency of waking up right at the crack of dawn, when the morning light starts filtering in, and my cat also usually is up and about and she always comes in sniffing and jumps up to sit at her pillow at my window and spends hours of impending morning just watching outside and meowing quietly at the birds. I'm a morning person, so I've always just reveled that much more in those quiet mornings. But, this morning I didn't awake. I was so entirely in the crutches of deep sleep and up till that hour I finally awoke and got out of bed, I was really SLEEPING. My god, it felt wonderful. And it still feels wonderful. The difference is just MINDBLOWINGG.

Don't underestimate sleep, yo.