Staring At Forever And Trying Not To Blink

"Falling apart, you tell yourself you are dreaming only of the ones who never dream of you."

I had a few beers last night. I didn't think I'd drunk anything like as much as I can handle, but I ended up feeling sick and tired. I went to bed around four and slept fitfully until midday, when I was woken up by the sound of the cleaning lady. I didn't feel like facing the world at that point, so I decided to stay in bed until I had to get ready for work at four.

And maybe I was ill, because the state I slipped into was nothing if not a fever dream. I drifted in and out of consciousness for several hours, plagued by strange visions that my mind never seemed to quite grasp before I surfaced in my room again, staring at the gap in the curtains and listening to the rain outside. I'm pretty sure there was a storm, but I couldn't say for definite that it wasn't in my head.

At first I dreamed I was reading. I think the novel was my own, only the words didn't make any sense. It was as if they'd been stuck on the page in some random order, making nonsensical sentences and paragraphs that seemed to stop where they pleased. My dream-self perservered in trying to make sense of the arrangement, becoming ever more frustrated as the words hinted at meanings that were lost as quickly as they were suggested. It was an awful dream, the worst I've had in some time, and it struck very much at the heart of my insecurities. That I know this doesn't help me any. I have no desire to experience that feeling again.

My second dream was altogether more pleasant. I say it was my second dream, but it was nothing so linear. It's just easier to present things for others to read if I make it sequential, instead of a constant interplay between my conscious reality and the two separate dreams I was experiencing in my subconscious. Concepts like time and order are the first to be lost in such a state, and events were happening out of sequence and out of time, much like the words in my dream-novel.

In the second dream, I was meeting The Maybe Girl in California. Nothing of consequence happened; I got off the plane, I made my way through customs, and she met me in a terminal that bore a remarkable resemblance to Gatwick. We smiled, we hugged, we kissed. She took me to her car and we drove away. But the feelings I took from this dream were almost the polar opposite of those I experienced when reading the dream-novel. I felt happy and safe. I was on an adventure perhaps bound for a happy ending. Even if it wasn't, I was glad to be there, to be doing what I was doing. Above and beyond everything else, I felt a sense of contentment.

My alarm dragged me from this reverie shortly before I had to get up. Fully awake, I felt conflicted and somehow sad. The sleep seemed to have exhausted rather than refreshed me. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at myself in the mirror for a while, wondering who I was and what I was doing, wondering about my priorities and about what I want from my life.

That contentment, I've only ever felt it in my dreams. But the insecurity, the fear, the constant sense of not knowing...I feel those all the time. Chances are that I'm a fair bit more than a quarter of the way through my life now. I don't feel happy or even satisfied, and I don't really know what I'm supposed to do about it.

I wouldn't describe myself as an unhappy person. I'm certainly not a whining neurotic. I know I've been lucky in many respects, and I know that there are millions of people whose lives are torture compared to mine. I'm not depressed. I don't sit in my room and cry, wondering where it all went wrong. I just don't know where to go or what to do. I don't know how I can ever not feel so cynical and jaded. I can't see a time where I'll be able to wake up and look at the day ahead, at the life I'm living, and not feel like I can't face it.

I can't tell you how fucking tired I am of that feeling. How far have you fallen when it seems that getting out of bed might break your heart?

I'll remember this summer for the storms and the strange dreams. I'll remember it as a time when I retreated into myself and still didn't find the answers I sought. I hope that one day I'll remember this summer and know that it was worth it. Maybe that's what I'm missing. I've thought a lot and I've written a lot. I appear to be ready to take yet another leap at yet another skyhook, but none of it means anything unless something changes. I can't go on like this, staring at forever and trying not to blink. It scares me, and I'm not sure I can do it by myself anymore.