clandestineheart - Tumblr blog

clandestineheart · 2 years

Text

it’s been four weeks, thirty days, seven hundred and twenty hours, give or take, forty three thousand and two hundred minutes, and two million five hundred ninety-two thousand seconds.

it’s been four weeks, thirty days, seven hundred and twenty… can you hear the clock ticking?

it’s been four, long, excruciating weeks since i have had a full night’s sleep.

i don’t get it.

i open the internet app on my phone, and i type “insomnia”—the word that only makes my eyes roll out of their sockets at this point—into the search bar; as if reading about it some more could help me cure the problem. i tend to do that a lot.

it’s just that nothing seems to work anymore. i do what they tell me—i work out before bed, even though i hate working out. i stop eating three hours before i plan on going to bed. i drink all kinds of magic teas, stay off caffeine… and when that doesn’t work, i do the exact opposite, websites and internet are useless anyway, and you’re better self-medicating than reading and actually going through with what some wannabe-doctor-reporter writes you should do; but still, no effects whatsoever. and when none of the sleeping pills i get prescribed work… there come the sedatives.

see, i’m not the biggest fan of self-medicating. or medicating in general. i have some strawy bits of medical knowledge scattered around in my head, from hearing it here and there and remembering it; so, accidentally overdosing is not even a thing that crosses my mind when i take any pills anymore. and don’t get me wrong; it’s not that i don’t like the effect benzos have on me, it’s that i like it too much. and if i know one thing it’s that i don’t need to add a benzodiazepine addiction to my platter on top of everything else, especially since i have no one to get the pills prescribed by. they’re not a long-term solution. i know it, everyone knows it. i can’t live off off speed and xanax, no matter how hard i try to believe it.

so, i put “insomnia” into the search bar, pretending, almost, that i’ll find something new entirely, even if only twenty minutes have passed since the last time i searched it; but what else is there for me to do, when i can’t sleep, and can’t write, and can’t read.

“persistent problems falling and staying asleep,” says the top of the page in a font smaller than i’d normally think it’d be written in. “problems falling and staying asleep.” great. as if i couldn’t tell what the symptoms were already, after four weeks, thirty days, seven hundred and twenty hours… but i digress. “very common,” it says, right below that first sentence, “more than three million cases per year in the US, alone…”. i huff under my nose, because, however common it may be, no one i’ve ever known has had this kind of problem before… this, or they just drunk it away, and that won’t be the route i’ll take. i read along the page, line after line, and i think i probably have it all memorized by now, the whole page. i close my eyes, and out of sheer curiosity try and repeat all it says. “persistent problems falling asleep and staying asleep,” i say, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears, “very common, more than three million US cases per year, self-diagnosable,” i continue, feeling proud of myself for getting it right so far. sad, how when everything around you feels like a death sentence, you feel good about accomplishing things even as small, and as useless as this one. “treatment can help, but this condition can’t be cured.”

i open my eyes and am faced with these same words i just said out loud to no one but the empty space around me, staring me back in the eye. i quickly look at the upper left corner or my phone—twelve am, it reads, in fat, white numbers. another day has gone by, a new one has already started. one more to add to the no-sleep list; because two hours is nothing, if even a joke of a time to rest.

i blink. twelve o’one. another minute gone, and wait, there’s one more, and more, and i blink once more, and the minutes keep passing, time doesn’t stop for me. i don’t expect it to, yet i still feel like it should, when i think about it. i feel like it does, because i’ll blink once, twice, three times… and before i know it, it’ll be three in the morning and i’ll have spent yet another sleepless night, staring at the wall. with songs unwritten in my notebook, lines unsung onstage, ideas for new stories never seeing the light of day.

and how could i know? maybe they could be great? maybe they could change the world, cure cancer or end hunger. or maybe even just make a few people smile? they probably wouldn’t, but how could i know? i can’t. because they’ll never leave the stone cold walls of my head, never break free of the prison that’s my mind.

before i’ll know it, my whole life will have passed with me doing nothing but looking up ways to solve problems you know can’t be solved.

it’s been thirty one days, seven hundred and forty four hours, give or take, forty-four thousand, six hundred and forty seconds…

0 notes

clandestineheart · 2 years

Text

i yearn for a quiet day. a day with no words of hatred spoken inside my head, no sharp pins stabbing my insides, and no tears spilled in the solitude of my home.

i yearn for a warm embrace. a gentle touch, for heartbeats beating in unison, familiar smells that make warmth spread in waves through my body, and promises of a great tomorrow whispered softly in my ear.

i yearn for the ability to find pleasure in the simplest of things. to laugh at bad jokes my friends make, to get so invested in a book i’m reading that when i finish it, it feels like my life has ended. to breathe in the clean air of the countryside and feel at peace, to find the green of the forest beautiful.

i yearn for love, i yearn for happiness, i yearn for peace. i yearn for sunshine and green meadows, moonlit streets and midnight walks. i yearn for days spent lying in the grass, or counting stars with the person i love.

but most of all, i yearn for the day when i can look myself in the eye, and genuinely say—“i want to live.”

0 notes