EmilyIsWell

My sanity is about to take a hiatus, but my insomnia is here to fill in for it.  

Life is trying to break me again.  I’m discovering bombs in each nook, that will send little pieces of everything I have and know flying in every direction, and I’ll spend the next year picking all of it off the floor.  

I guess it never does get easier.  Here’s to the explosion, the casualties, the rubble, and what will be there after, when it is all cleaned up.  

I lived on a mountain.  The air bit at your skin at 5am.  At 7am, we’d eat porridge, half our bodies hiding under the tablecloth, warmed by the breath of a vornado heating fan.  3pm’s were sunny or rainy.  In the sun, the trees speckled shadow’s across the uneven pavement- we rode our bikes down the hill, and I aimed mine for the cracked pavement, where it raised and split from a tree root.  The bike would get a few inches of air, and this satisfied me.  In the rain, I watched the droplets stream down the window, making frustratingly asymmetrical journeys to the bottom of the pane.  The water tank outside overflowed from the rainfall, making the sound of a large gutter or a small stream. 

At 8pm, there was mostly darkness.  The sky, hiding behind the branches of the tall trees, was a mixture of deep black and bright light.  Just as plentiful as were the raindrops plastering the window, were the stars, washed across the blackness.  They would shimmer, some of them coming in and out of vision.  It sometimes seemed like there might be 20 per cricket, flickering, winking with each chirp. 

The stars were overshadowed greatly, though.  I would look far, crane my neck as I had to just to look at the lights of the city, all orange and red and green.  They were holding the promise of excitement, success, a future- a glimpse into life in a real city.  I imagined they were the lights of skyscrapers, real city structures, and not the orange streetlights of little Hilo. 

I live in a city now- 5am’s are not chilly, but merely cooler, so I might search in the dim glow for the thin blanket neglectfully kicked away in the air of 12 am.  Large trucks growl and grumble outside my room.  I do not see them, and in my half-sleep, they are just empty noise.  As I wake up slowly, I identify the release of air, the BEEPBEEPBEEP of a bus, letting off and picking up.  I recognize the heavy, overworked garbage truck from its tired, deep wheezing.  A car alarm goes off, seems to end, and repeats.  Over and over.  I begin to feel violent.  By 7 am, I have once again discarded the blanket. 

By midnight, I am looking through the mess of the city, searching for lights.  There are lights all over, but they bluntly stab my sight.  It is the few visible stars, faintly gazing through the city light, that I fixate on, holding the memory of a quieter, cooler place where less thoughts were wasted in the brightness, and more thoughts were whispered away into the dark.   

Here is my city, all aglow.  It is overtaking the memory of that mountain day by day- with each that passes, I long less for light bulbs, and more for stars. 

I lie in a room, dimly lit from streetlights outside, with the noise of late-night cars, filled with fellow insomniacs, grumbling wearily up the hillside.  This box I inhabit is filled with things that are supposed to matter.  I adhered as many paintings would look acceptable to my walls- each of these took hours, days to create.  Each took “passion”.  I organized my jewelry- much of it gifts from people who I care for.  I piled my collection of clothing over the years into the closet- I say piled, because it really is piled and not hung or folded- there begins my lack of care. 

This deficiency spills over onto my desk, which the jewelry is scattered across, along with an array of paper, mostly music- another thing I am supposed to care about.  Yet there it lies, neglected.  The disease reaches beyond just the physical state of my room and belongings- I sleep in.  I wake up at 1 pm, realize I have nothing to care about, and then go back to sleep.  I get up sporadically, eat food recreationally, play a song in hopes I’ll feel newly motivated, and finally, text a friend to hang out, hoping that the company will make me care. 

When a friend cannot infuse my life with interest, I begin contacting guys, hoping that they will.  But they always seem to lead to either much less entertainment, or far too much trouble.  The overriding feeling is always one of dissatisfaction.   

Sometimes music and art do the trick- yet rather than make life matter, they seem to negate the importance of anything else.  They become solitary worlds and lives to be completely lost in.   One can eventually emerge from the isolation, feeling disoriented in the common ground previously shared with others, and disconnected and apathetic to them.  Art is something to saturate in, but carefully.  For someone like myself who loses touch with people easily, it is an easy escape, and a quick undoing for all my efforts to correct my social deficiencies. 

The final place I turn is my family, everyone most important to me.  But I quickly turn away.  There is no glue to hold people together.  Only their memories and conception of the future.  It makes them important to each other.  And what I’ve learned of these is that both are deceiving. 

Memories are cruel- even the good ones.  They belong to times that will never again be, and therefore, moments which we may wish to relive, to appreciate more the next time.  They will never come again. 

Our conception of the future is a dream- it is something amazing, or dramatic, or ideal.  Or it is borrowed from the past.  It drives us to get up in the morning, to fold our clothes, cross our T’s.  But, like our memories, it will never be.  What is yielded is not what we conceptualize.  And if the unexpected and unplanned is beautiful, it becomes nothing more than a memory. 

Our life is filled with things which seem to matter.  But I’m lying here, staring at that pile of laundry.  If I don’t hang it up, the world will go on.  If I do, the world will still go on the same as it did before.  This is both comforting and distressing, and for the nights when I can’t conjure a single emotion- not one of happiness for the life filled with art and good people that I’m living; not one of sadness for the life devoid of honest, close relationships and family that I am trapped in- there is emptiness in everything around me. 

I do music to keep busy.  I do art to keep busy.  I have friends to keep busy, and go to school, call guys, eat food, practice, do EVERYTHING to keep busy.  If I am too busy, too distracted to see how empty everything is, well, then it simply doesn’t seem empty.  But then I stop and look around-

There are a million other people awake tonight, like me, trying to push this thought back into their subconscious. 

There is nothing in this world that matters.

We are born.  We live, and then it is over. 

Of the many misused but great things of this earth, 2 AMs might be my favorite. 

2 AMs should be spent wandering around outside- there is only moonlight and street-light, and a person every two or three minutes.  It is quiet, cool, and calm. 

Or they should be spent grocery shopping- the stores are empty, there will be no waiting in line, and all the prepared foods may be greatly discounted (if you trust them…  don’t ever trust the poke). 

Or they should be spent with friends, on the balcony, with an array of delicious foods and funny subjects that make you cry till you laugh till a neighbor calls the cops.  

Or they should be spent fast asleep.

Nobody should spend their 2 AMs staring at a screen because they couldn’t stop staring at the ceiling and thinking.  And yet, according to my FB list of onliners (23!), I am not alone.

A second misused but good earthly thing- the tongue. 

It should not be curled back into the throat constantly during singing.  This will make you sound like a frog.

BUT it will not lay completely flat (like many people will tell you).  It is your ally in producing good sound. 

Also, HYPERFUNCTIONAL TONGUE = BAD KISS ——> don’t overuse when kissing.  Yes.  I said it.  Women of the world, you can thank me later.  Guys, please tell me you comprehend.

Number 3 goes to conversation.

We are all guilty of various conversational crimes, but the worst may be sitting, and listening, and acknowledging every moment of a conversation that you don’t remotely benefit from, enjoy, or appreciate. 

So, I suppose, misused thing #3 is actually…. word(s).

The fourth is desire.

My main point about this is not HOW it should be spent, but that it should.  

I guess this all depends on the sort of person you are.  My family (my mother in particular) was very…  responsibility-driven.  My mom never does anything fun.  In fact… she may just desire to complete dull and sensible tasks all day.  So, when I want to eat a piece of chocolate, I’m gonna eat it, and have no regrets.  I restrict myself only from a few specific things in life that I know would be bad news, and the rest…  what else is life for, right?

And now we’ve come to 3 AMs.  There are many more things I love about 3, but it is an especially good hour to CLOSE YOUR LAPTOP and attempt sleep again.

So, Tumblr, I’ve ranted at you like a hippocrite for a good 20 minutes (in between my facebooking), and I’ve been feeling less and less coherent, and more verbal-diarrhea-ish (verbal-diarrhea-ish?!) by the minute.  I think it’s time we parted again.  Bon soir, mon ami. 

The day started peacefully.  I awoke with the sun in my face at the early hour of one-o’clock.  I deactivated facebook, just to see how my life would be different for a week.  I then proceeded to clean house… and I mean, really clean.  It’s like early spring cleaning.  In the evening, while eating my 70 cent ramen dinner, a large cockroach ran by my foot.  I didn’t freak out… I instead put down my dinner, grabbed a slipper, and proceeded to aim and half-miss the little bitch.  It scrambled off in the direction of my room.  Grreeaaat.  I went on with my life. 

A little later, feeling quite happy with my day’s work, I did my nails.  I had to go to my room for the nail polish… and there it was.  It seemed entertained by my mild caution, followed by violent slipper-swings.  I hit it… but not hard enough.  It fell onto my bed.  I hit the wall, and it ran away. 

About a half hour later, I went around the corner to the bathroom.  And there it was!  I ran for my slipper, slapped it firmly against the wall riiiiight next to the cockroach…  my aim needs work.  In any case, here’s where the game changed….  it FLEW.  The large, brown-red, hairy-legged nuisance flew to the wall across.  It was now in the tub.  I took my slipper, tried to scare it into moving somewhere that i couldn’t miss…  and then, right in front of my eyes, it disappeared.  I guess it flew very quickly… I thought maybe it went behind a shampoo bottle.  I knocked them all down.  No cockroach.  And suddenly, it was flapping it’s scaley wings right in front of my face!  I waved my slipper, turned, stepped, slipped.  I hit the ground hard and, for the first time in my life, let out an actual scream.  Just a brief blurt of one in a moment of simultaneous pain and panic.  How shame. 

I got up slowly, and saw it slip through the door of the cupboard.  My hand, arm, leg, and knee were hurting quite a bit from my fall.  I went to my room to recover, sitting on the bed, moving my wrist around, which felt sprained.  I looked down at it…  my palm was red where I took the impact…  and then as I looked back up, I saw a blur of brown.  It was flying at me again.  I waved my arms, grabbed my slipper, and retreated.

Now I am clearly sulking a bit from my lost battle.  But this predator of a cockroach will be squashed before I sleep tonight.  Although I will admit, I’m a bit scared to pick things up, go around corners, and move doors…  this could be a long night.  Thanks asshole roach.  I was having such a productive day before we declared war.

There is nothing like this feeling…  you know as well as I do.

The feeling of being BORED OUT OF YOUR MIND and yet simultaneously stressed about who knows what. 

Happy finals week, everybody.  Friday will be a good day…  Monday, when we get our grades, may not.