Life a Little

Thought I’d go to sleep last night. It’s sunrise and that didn’t happen.

Insomnia isn’t horrible. It’s the things we think about while we’re not sleeping. That’s the bother.

Got my nightmares back. Not happy or unhappy about that. I’ve heard it both ways. I miss the nice dreams. I don’t miss waking up from them. Strange terrors about running through long subterranean corridors and I wake up gasping like I’ve drowned aren’t pleasant, but I can’t complain because I wake up to something better.

The tsunami is always present in my nightmares. It consumes the city and the growing fields. In my earliest dreams, when I was three or four years old, I felt the nausea of the seawater in my lungs. I don’t know why it’s always there. Like the world is slipping away. Like beauty is being swallowed by the water. And all I can see is fear-soaked eyes of resignation and terror.

But I wake up. Though it doesn’t ever really feel like I’m awake. Like I’ve escaped it. It follows me. I’ve tried to write about it, but the details slip away like the cold waves from the shore and I find myself breathing heavily and unable to type when I try to remember.

I love the ocean. But I hate it. I long for it, and I’m afraid of it. None of it makes sense.

It’s been a long day(s). I should try to sleep. If I can.

-Eddy

Love For a Nightmare

I’m actually afraid to go to sleep. Not because of the usual nightmares. Those make sense. I’ve learned to accept them and be glad to wake up from them. Sometimes they’re the only reason I am glad to wake up.

No. Lately I haven’t been having the typical nightmares. Lately I’ve been dreaming nice things that make me hate waking up. The kind that make us claw at our pillows for just a few more moments in the dream, and curse ourselves that we can’t just stay there.

I hate those dreams the most. They’re relentless. You get a taste of joy, but it slips away so completely that you even lose the memory of it the longer you’re away. Life would be easier without the reminder of how great it could be instead of the nightmare reminder of how much worse it could be.

I want my nightmares back.

Your confused and perturbed friend,

Eddy