The dreams of an insomniac are broken. Fragmented, like a cut up photographic film and stuck together using the glue of lucidity. The less you sleep, the more you daydream and even those daydreams quickly become either too colourful or too grand for you to believe them much. Surreal sensations and Daliesque distortions start to squeeze your mind for all the brain juice that’s in there. It’s like you’re living in a cartoon but without the added benefits of immortality like Wile E. Coyote or Sylvester the Cat have. But at least you’re not a vampire struck with insomnia. See, there’s a bright side to everything, but the vampires don’t like them much.
All of a sudden, you’re trapped in this purely pathetic pathos of your own. Time slows till still seconds stretch and you can watch them drip between the ticks on the clock like melting cheese. Then time quickens and you lose a day in the pocket of night and you have to wind up the watch again. And in those moments you realize how much clock faces like to be watched.
Then the thoughts start. First they come, one by one, politely a’knocking at the door. So you peep through the key hole of your mind and watch them knock and bang the door and curse at you and go away. Then they come in twos, the perfect salesmen to the animation of your life. Because that’s what thoughts are. Salesmen selling you their ideas. But insomniac thought-salesmen are dangerous because they sell mind-poison. And besides, you’re too tired to want to entertain them in the dome-home of your head. So you ignore them, you push them away with a quick dosage of social media or a book filled with superficial crap. But these thoughts, well they’re persistent and persistence breeds innovation and soon you have a fucking army of thought soldiers with their morbid idea-spears, set in a phalanx formation, marching to the door. And you look through that keyhole to see this avalanche of demonic, mnemonic morbidity approaching your door and the wooden beams you’ve nailed it shut with wont hold anymore and then they’ve got you enveloped in their twistedness and you’re done for. Sleep becomes naught but a dream.
As I write this, I’ve slept about ten fidgety hours out of the last ninety six. My mind is weak with work, my left eye burns like a piece of red hot coal has been stuffed in the cradle of my eye socket, and I seem to over-think everything I can get my head wrapped around. I don’t understand it but it’s happened before for longer periods of time and it will happen again. The worst part is that I’ve been unable to write for the last month or so. I try but I burn the words in my mind before I get them down on paper or screen. Quick witted metaphors become long-winded, wordy paragraphs that scream mediocrity.
I wouldn’t wish insomnia upon anyone but I’m pretty satisfied. Want to know why? Because soon the hallucinations will begin. And that’s when the real fun starts because that’s when the ghosts of long dead imaginary friends start to come back to haunt me. And therein lies great conversation.
So goodnight, dear readers. Sleep the drugless sleep of silent minds.
