Close your eyes. It's not happening. Of course, you're not stupid. But you have learned to play the mind. There are tricks and hiding places. You know them well. So, close your eyes. Picture the color green. Make your entire mindscape green. And I mean the whole fucking thing. Like St. Patrick's Day exploded inside your head.
Ignore the sweat slick twitching and the pain. You own your brain, you own the pain. It belongs to you, and only you can control it. They say you can't. They say lots of things. You sit in hard wooden pews and listen to them and you think: "They can't possibly mean all this shit...I will never forgive."
You didn't realize at the time that other people lived different lives. That your friends went to bed smiling and happy while you climbed the walls and prayed that the hands on the clock would stop moving. Even as you watched them smiling, you hated them for 'pretending' at happiness.
Pull it over you, around your body like silk. Cool. Wrap it tight and nothing can touch you. It's got nothing to do with you and it's got nothing to do with them. That's the weirdest part. Because of something that happened to someone you never met and no one will ever talk about, you jump when a door closes. You flinch when someone puts a hand on your shoulder. But you are getting better at making yourself wooden. It just takes practice.
When sleep does come, it is so deep that waking is like climbing a sheer rock face blindfolded. You open your eyes and everything seems like a dream and you want to go back to sleep where at least there was peace, quiet, and hope. Where you were not afraid and you did not feel shame.
Oh man, I so want to go back to bed! Really wondering why I climbed that sheer rock face to consciousness, if I hadn't been blindfolded I wouldn't have. Yet here I am wide away, reading one of my favorite authors and learning that other people have "lives." Well I wish them nothing but the best with that. And when their lives became too much to take in anymore for one day, I wish them sleep...
ReplyDeleteRight on, brother. ;)
DeleteSleep, the most beautiful of anesthetics, all the more addictive as one gets older. A reward at the end of a crappy day....
ReplyDeleteCome, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
DeleteThe baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the press
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw!
O make in me those civil wars to cease!—
I will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,
A rosy garland, and a weary head;
And if these things, as being thine in right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.
Sir Philip Sidney
A beautiful poem! May sleep envelop you as a bed sheet floating gently down, tickling your skin and removing every worry. Reminding you to consider only this moment. ~Jeb Dickerson
ReplyDeleteNice!
DeleteThe beginning of that Sidney poem has stayed in my brain since High School. Go figure. ;)