Insomni-Ache

Have you ever romanticised sleep? Staring at the ceiling, wondering how it’s possible to be this tired, but seemingly stuck awake? How ridiculous, to be so tired, you can’t sleep. Frustration seeps through the cracks in logic. This doesn’t make any sense. My mind is awake but my body is asleep, and it was the opposite during the day.

The birds outside sound the same, no matter what age you are. They never change, even though they aren’t the same. There is so much consistent beauty in this world. We become immune & desensitised when we see it too much. A little nostalgia brings back the real feelings though. Nostalgia of refreshed mornings that taunt in the distance.

It makes me reminisce to waking up on Saturday mornings years ago, ready to do anything. I wonder all the time if I’ll get there again, with that kind of unknown hope of each day potentially filled with a random kind of excitement. No structure.

I mean, if I wanted to, I could.

I’ve pictured myself on boats, planes, trains and buses somewhere in the middle of a foreign country. How did I get here? Steve McQueen said ‘I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than any big city in the world‘. I guess I could be homeless. Since I was little I’ve always documented spots I encounter, and mentally plan it as shelter if I was homeless. Instinct, maybe.

So let’s say I was on a bus, in the middle of somewhere, how would I avoid the normalcy of the questions (my girlfriend, where did I get the money, my job, my bills) and avoid the system to see where it takes me without those limitations? That’s the feeling, even if it’s unattainable anymore, that the Saturday mornings created, with 2 parts imagination and no responsibility.

The first tram arrives. It must be close to 6am. Damn, it happened again? Eventually the frustration comes back and I’m further from sleep than I was distant in my fantasy.

The light eventually enters the room from outside, and soon the ‘time to rest‘ window closes, leaving me to enter a new day the same way I finished the last. Sleepless.

Even those who dwell in isolation will idle through the morning hours alone. The mind puts the body in jail. It feels like 2 people having a conversation next to you whilst you eat alone. Whatever they say is going to steer your thoughts, as you’re a captive audience. But why are they here at such a strange hour, eating now? I guess if the restaurant is empty, the voices seem louder.

Precious sleep, you allude me for now. I’ll get take-away, or just away, next time.

C.f