Insomnia
(Electronic - Twisted Tenderness)

In the past I've dabbled in a bit of creative writing here and there but never really took it seriously. It was more an exercise to free my mind from living within the confines of perception and the world around us. Sometimes life lulls you to sleep and you need to wake up before you become a victim of the mundanity of it all.

Here's a short story I started about 6-7 years ago but never really completed. Ironically it was called "Insomnia" -- something I've never experienced in my life.

It's a bit rough so don't mind the grammar and spelling mistakes.

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Insomnia

As I laid in my bed that night doing the one thing I hated most -- thinking; I realized how completely empty my bed was. I had that bed since my freshman year at university and I remember the day I bought it. I had desperately needed a new bed for my room after waking up on numerous occasions with backaches from my old mattress. The life of a student -- always pinching pennies, scrounging around for tuition money, yet always having enough money left over to go drinking. I decided to buy a futon, which would serve as a couch as well. Surprisingly I haven't used it much as a couch. Possibly a combination of my laziness and my lack of friends. Trust me, it depresses the hell out of me as well.

My bed has seen its share of visitors though. Some were girlfriends and lovers and some were merely friends who needed a place to crash after a night of drinking. On this particular night I wish I had their company. I quickly threw piles of clean laundry and old stuffed animals on my bed. Still felt empty. It's been awhile since I felt this way. Even though on most nights I slept on this bed alone, it still felt as though I was sleeping in a crowd. That's the comfort and feeling of companionship. Having someone there for you even though they're not physically there.

A while ago that feeling left me and I struggled with bouts of insomnia. I would lie in bed looking from dark corner to dark corner. In one corner, a bookshelf filled with books. Some were given to me by her. Books that we both read and shared. In another corner, a computer filled with letters we wrote to each other, conversations that seemed to never end and pictures that are gradually losing their significance. I wish I could just fall asleep at normal hours like everyone else. Instead I lay here, staring in the dark, letting my imagination run free and seeing subtitles in everything that passes by.

The first night of insomnia, I found solace in listening to music. Music has always comforted me. It's the feeling that someone out there understands what you're going through, and that you're not alone -- even if you are. It's also about self-loathing. There's something completely intoxicating and addictive about self-loathing. We're all masochistic beings. Maybe we need to see the contrast between sadness and happiness to really enjoy happiness when it comes. I don't know what it is, but it can sure be depressing. I swear to God.

And as the hours passed by, the music became more of a backdrop to my insomnia and I could start to see the glow of the sunrise behind my white Venetian blinds. When I could hear the shuffling of feet in the hallway as my family prepared to go to work or school, I would decide to finally fall asleep. I slept in hopes of waking up with selective amnesia -- forgetting the last 3 years of my life -- but it never happened. Just like that old movie with Bill Murray where he kept waking up on the same date everyday. I think it was Groundhog's Day. I always woke up remembering vividly the day before and yet I couldn't distinguish the day before from the current day. When you're up 21 hrs of the day, that tends to happen.

Every morning I'd wake up thinking about the very thing I didn't want to think about, along with all the poor decisions I made in my life. I've always had good intentions; they just never panned out the way I intended. Have you ever noticed that whenever someone talks about good intentions, it never ends up well? "Mom had good intentions. Too bad the cold medicine she gave the dog killed it." All my life I've been taking a headlong rush down the road to hell, stubbing my toe on every poorly paved intention in my life and I am just now coming to terms with it.

So I've lost track of how many days it's been now since the starting of my insomnia. But I know it's getting better. I think. My bed is still empty and my ex-girlfriend hasn't come running back to me yet, but the dark corners of my room are no longer laced with bad foreign film subtitles. They're just dark now.

Last night I caught myself talking. The sound of my voice scared me. I'm not sure if I was talking to myself but I had a phone to my ear. And the person on the other side seemed to care. They seemed to understand. They too had insomnia. The voice soothed me. The voice told me a story about a man named Fas, who sailed across the sea in search of a new world. He had imagined a world with bright beautiful hues. Where no one spoke yet knew how each other felt. Love there didn't need to be heard, it only needed to be felt. Time -- it seemed to move half a step slower. Fas never came back. No one ever heard from him again. Some say he found the new world and stayed there. Some say he died at sea chasing his foolish dreams. No one really knows for sure but you can always tell whether the storyteller was an optimist or a pessimist by the ending they chose for the story.

I'm not quite sure if I really talked to anyone that night but I didn't feel quite as lonely. I think I fell asleep before the sun rose that morning.

I'm slowly finding that one is sometimes more than two.