i am half asleep. my lids are heavy like cement. it’s a fitful thing, hypnogogia; forcing myself to stay awake until i pass out to keep the unwanted thoughts at bay.
i watched frazier. i watched will & grace. i watched a snippet of ‘that 70’s show’ but i couldn’t take it. heh.
what thoughts, i bet you’re wondering. what thoughts is she so tired of having that she’s willing to do this?
you wouldn’t believe me if i told you. well, ok, maybe one or two of you would.
i have this obsession with death and dying. specifically, with what happens. and, of course, since i can’t know, i imagine. and, as you know, that’s not such a good thing for me.
sometimes, when i think about it, i actually think and feel that if i think about it long enough, i can make it happen. sometimes, i think about it and i realize that all these years are really going to end and i’m really going to die, just like everyone does and i get so angry and at the same time, so scared.
i have known for a very long time that i will die alone. i’ve tried to deny it. i’ve pretended for a very long time that some miracle will happen and i’ll meet someone who will actually want to spend the rest of their life with me. someone who will sit with me when i’m dying so i won’t be alone.
even as i know i’ll be alone in the experience, regardless.
somehow, the thought of not being alone makes it seem bearable. which is funny, i guess, because i’ll bear it either way, won’t i?
i get angry because, damn it, it isn’t so much to ask out of life. but, apparently, it is.
and i get scared because i really don’t know what happens and no one can tell me or change this fact of the big unknown.
sometimes i think it’s just like everything else we know of the world or anything…. things come into being, they live, and they die. no thing ever lives more than once and i suppose we’re really quite amazing in that we get to have a sense of awareness in life at all.
of course, that could just be arrogance, couldn’t it? the assumption of awareness.
i remember when i could believe in some supreme being or power. but i can’t manage that anymore. i guess even my special, resilient, stupidly persistent brand of idealism has its limits.
sometimes, i think the answer is all science and physics. that it really is true that energy just changes form… it never dies. but that doesn’t mean this experience, this sense of ‘me’ survives.
what if it is true that all i (or you, for that matter) am is a random collection of impulses that give the appearance of a cohesive ‘self’? what if it really is all illusion and this flickering time of ‘being alive’ is all we’ll know?
for that matter, what if dying is like going to sleep permanently and without dreams?
there are those who say it doesn’t matter. or that it shouldn’t. they say ‘live now’. and i am, just like you are, just like we all are… but i have this sense of the preciousness of this life, this time… and i have this sense of how fleeting it truly is…
and i guess sometimes, i just wish i hadn’t spent so much of it needful of things i’ve never had and enduring the slow, grinding process of realizing that i will never have them.
i love life. i love this world. i love people. i love the experience of the experience. always have. but i purely hate not having anyone to really feel free to share it with, no one with whom i can just be… me… all goofy and contradictory and sharp or soft or whatever adjective fits.
i’ve never actually had someone love me just for me being me. and the irony is, i’ve been willing to love everyone just for being them. that doesn’t mean i say the right things at the right time in the right way. most times, i muck that up real good.
but what it does mean is that i try. you have no idea how hard i try. or what goes on inside that i never even put here. i never talk about.
i’d like it if i had someone i could talk about those things with… someday. someone i could curl into when the weight of mortality is heavy. someone who would understand all of this and not much mind that i’m just a contradictory human.
i keep saying this like somehow, saying it will magically change the fact that it isn’t happening. my own little mantra of hope… that even as i’m whittling away at the sliver of believing, somehow, there will always manage to be just a little bit left.
my own perpetual motion machine, i reckon. i guess that’s the real lesson…. you never give up hope until you do.
but i still can’t sleep yet.