The Monsters In My Bed
What is the first thing, thought, feeling, worry, hope, dream that you notice when you wake up ? Because there is such a thing that is to say, I am awake now. That boundary between sleep and consciousness. Is it gradual for you? Do you slide into wakefulness ? Do you fall ? Do you rise ? Do you appear in it? Are you thrown into it? That brittle boundary. It’s not there, then it is.
For me, it’s something like this.
I am in a hallway first. Quite , calm and generally quite welcoming. I have already forgotten my dreams at this point. It’s a middle place, limbo. There is a door at the end of the hallway and I open it. I always open it. I never stopped to think that maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I can chose to never wake. But alas, I open it and there I am. It’s a room full of “people”. Voices, ideas, thoughts, memories — call it what you want. I am awake.
The torment is almost instantaneous. Choices. I could lay here, I could maybe I even should. Just stop. Would it be possible? To just stop. Complete and utter equilibrium. Statis. The thermodynamic death of my little corner of the universe. Ah it’s tempting but like a shark, I have to keep moving to stay alive.
So as cold hands reach out from the darkness in the back of my brain, tearing at the skin on my face, trying to pull me into the void, the work I did yesterday to build the world that will keep me alive and the work I must do today, the promises I made — to no one else but me — they save me. I hate going to sleep because everday I have to choose to wake up, I’m terrified that one day I will chose not to. For now, I shake of the shackles of non-conciousness, sit up and get out of there. The good news is, the monsters in my bed can’t follow — not yet.
