Insomnia Lullaby

I used to love early mornings, the freshness of dawn and the smell of trees. I'm the first to see the sky filled with golden streaks while everyone is still sleeping. Not the type of morning coming home wasted and feeling empty. The mornings when I voluntarily wake myself up, feeling rejuvenated, without the worries of everyday life. Those moments when I look forward to new beginnings.

The worst thing is lying wide awake in bed thinking why I can't sleep. I stare at the wall and it stares right back at me. The more I push the reason out of it the more I can't die even just for a moment. I wish for a sleep fairy to ease the pain, or at least, the possibility of affording sleep fairy's medications like drugs and alcohol. I know there could be a sea of reasons all competing for some space in my mind. In my screaming silence, I notice everything little thing. PMS gradually turning me into a monster as I get older. The chorus of the cricket outside. The lonely gecko's echo. The million other things that I have to do. Those who will betray me and I will betray. And everything else that makes my current life more interesting. Everything else that keeps me awake and alive.

I know I don't have to beat myself up. I have long-days stretches that I shut myself inside my dome of safety. When I have nothing to live for, it kills me. When I have something to live for, it still kills me. Either way, I'll live. I'm running on empty.

Let's not pretend that emptiness could be the reason. There's a certain kind of danger in embracing this freedom. It's like finding a special place in the vast sky, up there I don't belong. I can do whatever I want without feeling. When I feel a slight disappointment, I can easily leave someone without an explanation. Someone tells me I'm too perfect yet he doesn't live up to my expectations. That's the curse of detachment for you.

I found a secret friend stronger than anyone else. Sometimes I want to punch right through the hollow blocks of random people's homes until my hands bleed into shock. I will run and hide from the tribe leaving a trail of blood along the way. They will follow it, capture me, and throw me into the raging fire. And maybe I will emerge from hell, and I will kill them. Some kind of disorder from time to time, an opportunity to color their boring lives. It's their chance to live. A chance to rebuild their houses and reset their lives. How I want them to feel my own pain. Behind the beauty of my youth is a criminally insane, chaos-loving monster within, it's funny to think about actually. It is impossible everyone else is happy but me. I know it is not real.

At night, I am safe here with my morbid thoughts. Free enough to let my dream scenes fast forward in my mind, secretly destroying, crying in silence, loving from a distance. Loving someone unknown. Loving each other obsessively. Once I go outside, I run the risk of being vulnerable again. And so the story goes like this, I will meet a man and the man will like me. I fill his emptiness coming from my own emptiness. He will run after me and I will run back to into hiding. Back in my dome, protected from all the human complexities, including my own. Deep down, I desire for someone to put me in chains and never be allowed to disappear again. Safer as someone's slave. It's safer to be human. The burden of freedom is just too much to handle.

Somewhere in the middle of my night thinking, I hear a song playing in the not so distant past. I remember how it is to love and be loved. I was still not as intricate. I had no words for anything.

All the other songs played, jumping from one night to another. All in different places as if everything was just a dream. One night I was living in the altitude, away from the rest of the world. I had the mysterious mountains in front of me, the night sky and the lights that dotted the city. I could see other people's lives from a distance and I was quite content. I was staring out the window the next, it was a black winter night. The other night, I was standing outside in the cold in a strange town. Waiting for a stranger to decapitate me and make me appreciate how it feels to be alive. But then, there was nothing but snow and silence. I was quite content. I had nothing but those moments to live for, awake but not thinking.

When I have nothing to live for, it kills me. When I have something to live for, it still kills me. Either way, I'll live. I'm running on empty.