Now: This is me, thinking about what happens when I have insomnia. It rather feels like I’m sitting in a dark room and a PowerPoint is being presented on a screen.
Insomnia: Closing eyes is the first step of entering the oblivion. (Loops of different colors start showing up and expanding in the darkness under my eyelids). It’s easy: every one can do it. To open them is the harder task. Some people, usually the ones that have been through what is included in this PowerPoint one too many times, simply do the first step and forfeit. That would definitely feel fabulous. To open up your eyes again is so very difficult. Ok, this is what’s going to happen to me if I ever pull up my eyelids. First, there shall be light coming at me with mercy. It covers up every dirty corner of your mind. Second, oh dear, my sister’s birthday is tomorrow. I really want to pick up a very nice cake for her from that far away bakery shop. But it’s so cold and… far. On the top of that, my paper for Chemistry is due tomorrow! Umm, interesting. Why do I need to write a paper for my Chemistry class? Do Chemistry students ever need to write a paper? But, I’m not even in any Chemistry classes…
Now: This stage of insomnia, I call it random-mindless-no-logic-involved-drifting. It is actually quite fun.
Insomnia: (Loops of different colors keep expanding in the darkness under my eyelids). Why am I not falling a sleep? Why are there so many why’s for myself? I’m just making things so much harder for myself. Everything stops making any sense. By the way, I think that girl in DUC was totally checking me out… Oh, there comes the picture of the girl, right when I want it. She is dark, wearing a black North Face jacket and gray leggings, maybe jeans. She has a nice figure and beautiful face. I’m pretty sure she has a good personality, too. I think she is beautiful. It’d be nice if they make a Mind Printer, so I can print her off right now and try to find her out of the thousands of people on campus. No, actually, I’m pretty sure that if there were such a printer, I’m going to print a lot of other things that are much more beautiful and much more inappropriate. Did I just say “if they make a Mind Printer?” I can’t hide anywhere at all! “They say it’s going to snow tomorrow,” “they say it’s a good movie” and “they say: ‘oh, they have found out the cure for cancer–money!'”… The “they” tracks me down everywhere and strikes me with all of its might. I can only live my life when there is the “they.” What am I? Am I not some entity that is by my own being? Am I? Hamlet, oh dear brother, “whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of trouble, and by opposing end them?” In my average-everydayness, who is going to understand me as I possibly understand the being of myself? Here, in the center of nothing and nowhere, in the mud of insomnia, I am being busy with notions of ontology and dying alone. It is not even the loneliness that makes “this place” so cold. It is the deep frustration, the anxiety of hopelessness and the hollow that eclipses the well-lit and colorful wrap of the wall standing between me and the rest of entities that surround and conceal.
Now: This is the stage when insomnia has taken away too much power. There are many muddy problems accumulated in my brain through average everydayness, years after years. Some are simply bad, and the others are systematically bad and need to be dealt with. It is not wise to face these problems when I’m half way to Narnia (yes that is the place I’m always dreaming of). Insomnia stirs the peaceful water up until the logs that have been buried and decayed finally resurface and blow out several stinky bubbles. I might have ignored them when they first showed up; I threw them into the water and let them sink. It happened so fast that I wouldn’t even remember.
Insomnia: “Stop thinking. Stop logic.” I imagine a bucket of white paint and pour it everywhere, as far as my eyes can see. A brush is needed, so there it is. To paint on the screen is to erase every bit of it.
Bakery shop, paper, Chemistry, girl, printer, Heidegger, the world, water, logs–everything is erased from the PowerPoint. I sit down, nice and tight, in the middle of a room that is warm and fuzzy. All the walls are white, soft and possibly filled with cushion. I put cuffs on my wrists and stare into the whiteness.
– By Alan Shen
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
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