When Insomnia Strikes

When insomnia strikes, that's when the mind goes where it doesn't usually visit. Places hidden deep, yet resurface during odd moments in your daily life so often that you don't even register its presence. But when insomnia strikes, these moments replay one by one in your mind, and instead of trying hard to fall back into the world of the undead, the mind whirs back to life, frantically analyzing and reanalyzing every single one of those moments.

I remember once reading about realizing presence. You won't know a person's presence, an object's presence--anything's presence, until you've lost it, or near to losing it. "As contraries are best known by contraries, so is the delight of presence best known by the torments of absence." Is it the torments from loss of sleep that brings forth the delights of clarity of mind; or is the mind even clear when your body craves the rest the brain simply doesn't want to give?

Of course, one does wonder where my clarity has gone with such confusing structures of sentences. Perhaps I really do need that sleep after all.

Then again, what one needs, one does not always gets.

People always ask, why are you not sleeping together with the world? I would have love to answer "because I do not belong with the world," but I'm not sure if it's the complete truth. The world is an odd place; just as you're getting comfy, thinking "ah, this is where I belong", something falls, crashes, burn and topple, and just like that you're in stranger lands yet again. And vice versa. Sometimes I think nobody belongs completely with the world. We;re all living in our own secluded planet.

And my very own planet is half dark half light. People tell me Geminis are supposed to be just that; half of everything. Sometimes I think so too. I'm torn into two, and without these two halves it's like I'm not complete. But I don't think one can be both and still be sane, and so, the darker part was chased into concealment, locked away and stashed behind a smile, diverted with a toothy grin.

And eventually the lighter part became dominant, the mask solidify, and the pretense drops. Constant vigilance and an intense fear of judgment had done their job well, had moulded and shaped both parts--light and dark--to suit you up for what the world wants to see. The pouts and tears and frowns are suppressed, because who wants rain and thunder when rainbows and sunlight is prettier? And so the mask and you become one, soldered together so tightly until you don't know which is which anymore.

Who am I, and which is the mask?

And why am I so afraid of judgmental eyes, when my life is for me to live and mine alone? Who do I have to fear and please besides myself?

But I do care, and I do fear, and I do still want to please. And every time one of those people who have not a care for others walk and talk with minimal fear of offense, I can only admire from afar. For politeness is firmly ingrained, courtesy driven deep, and a strong sturdy chain of longing and wants grounds me, my wings clipped. As Vida Winter said, "Politeness. Now there's a poor man's virtue if ever there was one. What's so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it's easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else. People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think about them."

Am I without ambition? Maybe I just need something to push me from me safety zone and I'll be flying. A shot of something not completely pleasant, yet unflinchingly powerful.

But for now, I keep my own secrets for fear of judgments, I keep my own wants for fear of criticisms, and I keep my silence (which I never seem to be able to keep nowadays).

Perhaps it's time to go back to bed, and let the mind goes where it wants to.