InSommnia

The Chaos of Balance = Life
.....

   I had come to the point of not letting anyone in.
My emotions were on hold: I was numb, unable to feel anything.

In a perverse way it was relief - but only on the surface. If I*d dared - or had been able to - reach further, deep, inside, I would have then been completely and ultimately crushed; shattered; imagine an old porcelain cup used many, many times, a network of cracks running through it...you hold it one last fatal time and it crushes into tiny pieces in your hand.

I was so near to breaking.

My life then consisted of lone days and nights; hiding from the outside world in my house, only leaving when the fridge was bare and I knew I had to eat; only leaving, hoping to breathe, for solitary walks in the park; only leaving through an adjoining door to a usually silent shop. I was destitute. Not a soul cared about me.

Did I care anymore?

Everything was monumous effort: The simple act of brushing my hair, fixing simple food then having to actually eat it, the basic housework, the laundry for one, buying food and other essentials, paying bills, sorting (or leaving) the daily post and paperwork. I drifted, subjected and pulled to the current of life like a piece of driftwood. Devoid of energy, my body ached, my soul ached...I wanted to forget, but I couldn*t.

I lived on very little money as my needs were few. My house and the adjoining hat shop business were left to me by my mother who had died 3 years before, so no rent or mortgage to pay. I survived on the savings I had made from freelance writing and from past income the better years of the hat shop had generated; this was just as well since the shop could be empty of customers for days at a time in winter. People just aren't wearing many hats like they wear many shoes. Even during the coldest months, one hat, if any at all, will suffice.

Apart from the unrelenting pain, not having the busy distraction of a successful running hat shop could also have incited my thinking of an early death as an escape. Gone the timetable upon which my life had strictly adhered to. Gone the few friends I had, one by one leaving because I never answered the phone or went to the door, or because I dropped out of social gatherings. Gone my ability to feel anything but anxiety and deep depression. The days were too long and banal, the nights longer and darker. Sleep was a snatched hour or two at most. I had thought about ending my life then: it seemed the torrent of pain was endless; there seemed to be no purpose of living any longer. What for?

It was a Wednesday, mid afternoon - I forget the time, it was somewhere between 2 and 4 - when I decided to end it there and then. As to be expected there had not been a single customer that morning, so I closed up the shop for the day. I planned to drink myself into a stupour and then swallow the whole bottle of sleeping pills. During that lonely period I drank a lot, it numbed me further, turned the repetitive thoughts woolly, made things a little bearable.

I was about to open the bottle of vodka to pour the first of the many double shots that would begin me on my fatal journey, when the small alarm clock on the bedside table fell to the floor. I was taken aback: There was no logical reason for the clock to move 10 inches forward and leap off the table. Standing the unopened bottle down between my feet - I was seated on the edge of the bed - I bent down to retrieve the clock that had landed a few inches right of my right foot.

The clock held in my hand, I stared at its face for a moment or two until it dawned on me that the time was wrong; it read: 0001. Strange, I didnt realise that the battery had run down. How could it read a minute past midnight if a few hours ago it was showing the correct time?

Then I started feeling sick in the pit of my stomach and the room began to spin, I curled myself up into a tight ball on the bed, the alarm clock clasped in my hand, and I tumbled into sleep.

I arrive at the Dream Studio. The atmosphere is quietly stressful, the white uniformed workers are fussing round me. They lead me, one by the hand, to a seat at one of the consoles. The Dream monitors are facing me - a dozen of them - and I can see myself - multiplied 12 times, recorded from different angles on those screens - back in my bedroom, on the edge of the bed, with the alarm clock gripped in my hand.

What shocks me is the look of utter hopelessness and finality in my face.

And I realise, I dont want to die.



~by Faith 2009~
Copyright © 2009 Stephanie Faith ~ updated / edited


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      S o m m n i a    S t r e e t

A complete second.

      Over in quicker than a moment. Normally.

I thought I was dreaming, it felt like I was; the road stretched before me ~ and upon turning ~ after me: with no beginning or end in sight, just disappearing into mist.

So, here I find myself standing ~ stranded ~ not remembering how I got there, on an eternal street.

Eternal streets, never knew they existed before. I'm scratching at my memory but it is a blur. What part does this place have to play in the grand scheme of things? For some reason I can faintly taste smokey steam, and there's a remnant of ticking clocks in my head.

This other plane or world is wrapped in a kind of darkness, where the convergence of colours have become muddy. (Faded, broken memories of lush green grass, blue sky, brightly coloured doors, white washed houses, and an ordinary grey pavement edging the darker grey of the road). This is a dead place, no flicker of life.

In the absence of flowers I see scraggly sticks of dead trees. The lampposts climb the sky, higher than tall, taller than just high, sucked into the clouds. From whereever they terminate they cast pools of grubby orange light. I don't like stepping in them, they feel poisonous. I know that each and every house identical to its brother, was long ago freshly painted and well kept, lived in and loved. As I walk passed them I feel their staring windows watching me and my stomach turns.

Sweet suburbia turned sickly.

Sommnia Street declares the sign. It's the one thing that breaks the monotony of the street. I stop and scrutinize it. Then I remember the train station of Sommnia; the arriving and departing steam trains, the heaving crowds of faceless people, all moving under the dictation of the loud ticking giant clock. The train station of Sommnia where time is a place, and a place is out of time. Where the one and only person who notices me, is an nine foot tall Station Master, holding a watch on a chain.

He told me to board the train which took me here.

I'd sat in an empty compartment, in an empty carriage, on an empty train. And in that intermittant zone of travel I must have fallen asleep. I had to come here, but I didn't know why. Yet.

The chaos of balance. The completion of a second. And my Self Quest continues...

                         Another second.

~by faith 2008~
Copyright © 2008 Stephanie Faith


Coming soon, the 2nd part of
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