Pillow Talk…

It’s shortly after midnight and I am terrified. I am also exhausted, but mostly just frightened through to my bones. From where I am sitting to write this, just over my left shoulder sits a modest collection of pillows. They lie in wait atop of my bed. They know that I should be over there with them and not sat at my computer writing grief-stricken confessions to the world. But what they may not know is that I am fucking terrified of them…

I know, that makes no sense, right? Stick around, it will…

In my previous blog post, I explained that for the past two mornings I had been awoken by nightmares only to find myself living it out in the real by way of performing CPR on my pillow that held an ephemeral likeness to that of a dead nine-year-old boy. I had woken while desperately trying to save this diminutive stripling, but all that was beneath my hands was a pillow burdened in sweat. To call this, unpleasant would be a gross misuse of the term, understatement.

But what does that have to do with now? Am I afraid of my pillows? For real? No. Not really, anyway. Not in the sense that they are fabric and fluff. But I am petrified by what may happen as they allow me to fall asleep. I am terrified of what lurks behind my eyes.

You know how most people curl into a seated fetal position when watching horror movies? Like when they pull their knees deep into their chests and cover their faces and… close their eyes? … That’s the part I am afraid of – closing my eyes. That’s where the horror lives. But since there is an inevitability that I will have to close them, this means that I have no refuge nor fetal position to shield myself from the darkness and dybbuks of slumber. This means that I am deathly afraid to sleep. Afraid of sleep! For fuck sakes!!!

It’s a complex set of shameful emotions to have, being a 35-year-old man who houses a childlike trepidation of the dark. The relative of shame is usually anger. And I won’t lie to you, I am angry right now. I am angry that I am this way – that I am alone and frightened to do the one thing that we as adults seem to crave – sleep!

The good news is, I do not have a desire to drink in order to find dreamless sleep. I just have a foolish yearning for my brain to be healed and better already.

I fucking hate PTSD. And I absolutely detest feeling weak because of it…

I have tried using the meditation apps on my phone as a way of calming myself, but each time the upper and lower folds of my eyes come together in mutual fatigue, my body jolts as if to be made from lightning itself so as to keep me from the cold, cruel hands of memory and tormented insentience.

I am quite literally at war with myself. A civil war where both sides lose while taking tremendous casualties. I am on the verge of tears in this paragraph. I fucking hate this…

There is a song that I heard recently, it is a dulcet tune with a saturation of sadness and intervals of harmonious wishes towards hope. It is a song that speaks to me plenty right now.

I’ll link it below. I am going to grab a drink (water) and implement some of that pertinacity that I am told I possess, and try to get some fucking sleep!