I’ve always had trouble sleeping.

When I was younger I’d poke my mother awake and ask her why I couldn’t sleep like everyone else and she told me to stop thinking, to just let all my thoughts float away and just think about nothing. My uncle told me to count till 100, several times. We tried everything, bedtime stories, homework to exhaust me and even watching TV with my mother, but nothing could shut my brain off.

I grew up and the very same brain that gave rise to my insomnia, decided to branch into many other conditions by overworking itself and I still wonder what it means to just stop thinking, to be able to shut your brain down without slushing down chemicals to do this simple job for you.

At first I thought it was my brain only that worked at 5000 miles per min but sometimes I feel like my being, my core, my soul; whatever it is that I can feel present and absent so often is running on a non stopping treadmill. Some days I’m so aware of my existence, I can feel every emotion; wide and awake beating within me, I drive for hours contemplating every single blessing in my life and it’s almost as if I am one with everything. Other days I feel as empty as a barren land, devoid of happiness and content; indifferent and drought. Then there are the days in between where I suffer and I feel myself slipping away; my thoughts, my pulse, my breaths and I feel nothing but pain in every inch of my body and soul and I always give it my best shot to hold on to any shred of sanity left within me.

2010

It’s how they became close; he lured her in by giving her the shoulder to cry on and the ears she needed to listen to her, she needed to empty her brain somewhere. He listened for hours relentlessly and he took her all in; bit by bit. He was falling in love with the part of her everyone else got scared of, the part people ran away from and avoided, the part people called weird and looked down on. He studied every part of her mind and absorbed all she had to say like they were sacred talismans he needed to know by heart. She couldn’t help but selfishly want to hold on to what he was offering her; a safe haven from a cruel world that would never accept her.

He always looked her in her eyes, never elsewhere, almost as if he was searching for an answer. Maybe he wanted to see a reflection of his own emotions in there and maybe he just wanted to know if there was space inside her for another heart. For he loved her in sickness and in health, he loved her when she broke down and when she made no sense, he loved her in her panic and her fear and he became the wall she could lean on and it was his claim that made her give him her heart, he claimed he fell in love with her beautiful mind, with her words and her twisted passages. He told her falling in love with her was like running through a maze where you discovered something that changed your life everyday. And she wondered if she could ever find that again.

#3

You’re the rippling laughter that finds me in every crowd and you’re the symphony in every song. You’re the glistening balm over my scars and the peace in my past.  You’re the blazing brightness in every sunrise and the melting warmth in every sunset. You’re the gleam that makes every star shine in my sky and you’re the oxygen in every breath I take. You’re the flow in my tears and the truth in my smiles. You’re the force of life that kicks within me and the reality in my dreams. You’re the essence of my humanity and the vessel that holds my soul. And your eyes hold the key to my freedom as your presence leaves me disarmed. For you are the most precious emotion my heart has ever known.