The meandering thoughts of a relentless insomniac
The restlessness that has invaded my very soul will not leave me alone. It is this that has me pacing the floor at night, that stops me from engaging in any meaningful relationships; that has me looking for something to assuage this feeling of constantly waiting for something, what this something is I have no idea and therein lays the problem.
It is gone midnight and I have discovered that it takes exactly fifty three steps to walk the perimeter of the living room. The curtains are drawn and the muted television provides the only source of light in the room, the disembodied voice of James Dean Bradfield is singing that self disgust is self obsession but self obsession sounds like too much of a commitment to me. Lately, the closest that I have come to deep and meaningful is from the unsolicited and unwanted wandering hands of a drunken, sweaty fifteen year old at a music concert. This could almost be funny if it weren’t slightly illegal. I have come to the conclusion that whatever I am looking for cannot be found in the mosh pit of a rock concert. Having your ribs crushed, your kidney impaled on someone’s elbow and being sweated on by a drugged up singer no longer holds the appeal that it once had. The romance has gone and all that is left is an aged rocker screaming tunelessly into a microphone.
I have an energy which cannot be matched by caffeine or any illegal substances; this is not an artificially induced energy it is something that exists inside me. It follows me, haunting me, stalking me leaving me unsettled and so around and around and around I go hoping that it tires before I do.
My pacing continues without a missed step.
For some, the darkest hour is just before dawn but for me, this is the hour of epiphanies, when the meaning of life becomes clear. I have walked miles around this room, I have solved mysteries in this room, I have discovered life and all its secrets in this room but sadly all this is forgotten by the time morning rolls around.
Maybe the only way to rid myself of this curse is human contact but the hour forbids it and anyway, how do you express feelings that cannot be put into words? How do you articulate the feelings that have no name? Ah! There are other forms of expression, I have already told you that this is the hour of epiphanies, had I been Archimedes, I would now be shouting eureka. There are other forms of communication between two people that does not involve conversation except maybe a few utterings in the throes of passion, this sometimes says everything that needs to be said or communicates the things that do not need to be stated. This is the age of communication but articulation is the one thing that is sometimes most difficult.
The pacing continues.
Paradoxically, the only thing worse than lack of understanding is complete and utter
understanding because where do you hide from someone who knows your every thought, who sees what you see and feels what you feel. Your inner most recesses are theirs and they know all your secrets, they knows where to find them because they are kept with their own.
There is someone walking the same route as myself but in another room on the other side of the city? Are they having the same thoughts, the same doubts as I have? I saw in that person the same restlessness that I feel in myself, in them I saw myself. The restlessness that pervades my very essence is mine, is ours.
But, all this is irrelevant as we dance a merry dance around each other and pay lip service to relationships around the world of which we can never be part. This omniscient presence keeps us moving, moving away from each other, always in sight but never in reach. Should I stop long enough to indulge, the restlessness catches up with me and moves me along.
Around and around and around I walk. Around and around and around go my thoughts both as aimless and directionless as the other. The only real purpose this serves is to douse this energy enough for sleep.
I seem to be outpacing this energy, it seems to be falling down on the home straight, maybe I can run away far enough out of it’s grasp to capture a few hours of oblivion. This night’s work has left me tired and finally bed beckons, tomorrow night will be no different. My restlessness has turned to an urgent need to sleep but as the first rays of the new sun light the dark sky and my reasoning is evaporating, my conclusions are becoming as elusive as the dream that is pulling me under. But, at the end of this day is yet another night, another night for navel gazing as I journey around my living room.
