My body was making sounds I'd never heard before. It felt like I was in the booth for a sound effects reel and just letting loose. My insides had developed their own language and were chatting back and forth adamantly. Probably about what an awful host I am. They would know. My organs. Blind and resentful. Another ghoulish squirm floated out and I clasped my hand tight to my stomach to quiet it, but it was no use. There was no mouth these noises protruded from, which made them all the more impressive. The sounds echoed in, around, and through my bedsheets. Churns and sloshes and fleshy mechanisms served as a repetitive mantra of alarm.
Along with the sounds came a sort of weird pain. Not a sharp or stabbing pain, nor a long or consistent one, but an intermittent, dull, leeching ache. Incongruent and separate from the cacophony, the pain ebbed and flowed from me like a blocked up drain; bubbling and gurgling and never making progress. Each time the pain would fade I'd experience the best relief of my life. It was tragic indeed, to have such joy stolen away. Simple joy in not hurting sent away with feverish disregard every few minutes. I was caught in a circuitous path of suffering and delight.
I spun around to face the other wall and curled up fetally in an effort to quiet myself. The noise and the pain were tricked into submission for a short while as they adjusted to their new orientation. The only comfort I felt was in the pure dark of my surroundings. Washed over with sightlessness, I lay wrapped up in my sheets, cocooned in the familiar comfort of blankets, juxtaposed with the unrelenting and annoying pain of something. I did not know what quite yet. I sat up and rubbed my eyes to remove the blur. It took longer than I anticipated. I struggled for quite a bit to be able to see clearly, and the blue-green splotch of my digital clock eventually became unmuddled. From a paint splatter to an unfocused word, to a bit of double vision trying to correct itself, then eventually to numbers. 4:16 AM.
That annoyed me even further. That means I'd been laying in bed with this troublesome issue for more than seven hours. And it felt like it, too. This is when things really get called into question. Unable to sleep and angry at my own body, you start to wonder about things. Not for long though, because my mind is forced to other things. Real things happening to me. So I laid there and wished I could be someone else. Someone who wasn't me. Someone who was better off than me. Not in any grand sense of things. I didn't want to be a rich entrepreneur, or a smart and savvy artist, or a talented musician. I wanted to be someone who was asleep and not experience a grotesque, unnerving spiral of hurt and squalor. A simple request it seems, but it was not granted.
Simplicity ruled over me and I threw the covers off in a surly fashion. I displayed my dismay to no one at all, but it still made me feel better. I marched over to my couch and turned on the TV. I knew there would be nothing on at this time, but if I couldn't sleep I might as well try to squeeze any amount of enjoyment out of this night. A movie was on one of the higher channels. A movie I had seen tens of times before. I didn't particularly like it, but I couldn't will myself to change the channel. I sat through hatred-inducing commercials, but it always came back and reengaged me. It was a modern day magic spell. And then another movie came on. A marathon of sorts. The same mesmerizing enchantment fell over me. I sat there, knees to my chin, wrapped up with my blanket like a babushka. I had been through three movies before I realized my pains had subsided. It was almost 11 AM now, but I had made it through. I had come out on the other side not unmade, but reforged.
This was wonderful. Perfect, even. The mindless, ridiculous joy of film held my attention so firmly that I was finally allowed to satiate my body's wants and instead get what my mind desired. Sleep, at last. Perfect. But perfection is so few in this world that I don't value it's merit. To be perfect is supposed to be desirable, supposed to be sought after. Perfection is a farce. All things are with flaw, and to seek something so wholly unattainable is admirable, but ultimately futile. I found my own brand of perfection that night. The shrine of opportunity. Indulgence gave way to respite. To be at peace is perfect. To not take things for granted. Fuck perfection. And I slept and I dreamed. And I woke up hungry and alert and dry-mouthed and sloppy. I was overjoyed. Awake and in control. Sheer perfection.
