This Ain’t a Crash…

The weather is getting chillier and that’s going to be a problem for me.  I don’t want to catch a cold.

Sleep and I sort of have a tenuous relationship at the moment and the truth is that it’s been this way for a long time.  It’s some parts intensity and more parts deprival and it seems like there is no in between.  But it’s the intensity that I can’t live without.   When I sleep I dream vividly and in resplendent detail and on the rare occasions when this occurs I wake up and have no idea where I am for a good 30 seconds.  Sleeping like this is often the best part of my day.  And my bliss is being threatened.  I need to figure this out.

For the most part I’ve always been a light sleeper, the result being that most of the time my dreams elude me.  Most of the time I lie awake or fall asleep in short unsatisfying bursts until I get so annoyed that I just get out of bed.  Good morning to you too.  But the last few month have been different.  I’ve been sleeping.  It’s been surreal.  But the chill in the air is threatening to put an end to all of this.  It all has to do with my fan.

During the months when it was warm, I was sleeping.  The reason was because nothing was waking me up.  Nothing was stirring.  The whir of my fan created a controlled environment which blocked out any distractions and created an ideal temperature for sleeping.  Combine this with new, comfortable sheets and I’ve been dreaming the dreams of kings.  But now the fan makes me too cold.  I’ve had to turn it off.  And now I hear everything again.  My controlled utopia is crumbling piece by piece and falling faster than the leaves from the trees.  It turns out that I needed that constant noise to keep me from hearing what was happening outside my bed.  Mostly silence.  The only sound you can’t drown out is the silence.  I’m starting to think that this isn’t a story about fans.

To say that the last two months or so have been surreal would be to maybe not use enough word.  I don’t know what word is the next logical progression after surreal, but that would probably be the right word.  I feel like I’m in second 27 of the 30 seconds it takes me to realize where I am after a really great dream.  I’m afraid that in three seconds I’m going to realize that I am in the exact same spot where I laid my head the night before and nothing has really changed since I last saw the sun.  I’m a day older but not a day closer.  And I’m just so.  fucking.  bored.

And I’m starting to think that this was the real reason all long.  For all of it.  It’s my cowboy phase.  I’m just running out of stories.  I had nothing left to say.  And in three, two, one I have to start talking again and I’m just not ready.  I’m not ready to realize where I am and realize that it’s that same boring shit as it was the day before.  I’m not ready to be disappointed again.  I’m not ready to give in to the realization that the life that happens in my imagination is so much better than the one that happens when when I leave my aprtment.  I don’t understand how I got here.  I don’t know how this happened.  Any of it.  But I sure don’t remember anyone asking for my input on the subject.

I really didn’t want to write anything that wasn’t sushiney anymore, but I also promised I wouldn’t keep all of the dark inside anymore either.  It’s no good for me.  While I was away someone told me that I knew how this story starts and that I should stick around and see how it ends.  But I was never told to write my own ending and that makes more and more sense to me.  I’ve always struggled with endings.  I think it’s because I can never write one that is believable.  I have good ideas that just fall apart in the end.  That seems to be my through line.  But maybe this isn’t my story to write.  It just sucks when your life story is written by a shitty writer.  My Life by Dan Brown.

I don’t know whether I’m off the hook for this ending or not.  That doesn’t seem to be the issue.  The issue is that I’m afraid that no matter how it turns out it’s not going to as good as I can imagine it could be.  Like whether I’m writing it or not, I should be.  And all I know is that I’ve been laying here for 27 seconds after a night of whatever is just above surreal and in three, two, one I’m going to realize exactly where I am and I’m going to have no choice but to get out of my bed and go back to it.  And there’s going to be nothing in it that makes me happy or gives me any reason to want to do anything but go back to sleep.  No more whir to comfort me.  Distract me.  Nothing but the silence.  Three, two, one.  The only sound you can’t drown out is the silence.