Insomniac Cookies
Insomnia: medical condition or seemingly the most intimate hell, tailor made to fit an individual. I use the word “intimate” because while sleeplessness affects many, the experience tends to be unique and personal to each insomniac. For me, it’s not a disorder or another restless night. It’s the place I visit more than any sane person would ever care to , and it only exists between the hours of 1 and 5AM. From bed, I disappear into the textured ceiling tiles, a sea of small bumps, splotches and imperfections, until I’ve drifted into contemplation. Pondering the increasingly real possibility of the notion that nothing exists beyond those tiles. Nothing beyond those tiles or the five walls that enclose me. Yes, I said five walls. Before you begin to picture an abnormally shaped bedroom, let me state that the fifth wall is a barrier that I created with and in my mind. Strategically placed to stifle the flow of logic during these trivial hours of the early morning. This, my friend, is true time travel, as many days pass within this window of several hours. They pass without a sound. A silent death. A passage. You’re leaving this world without so much as a ripple in the wet foot print at the mouth of your shower. Not even a draft down the corridor when the door slams upon your exit, as if you never were. Aimless thoughts wander and weave between pressed folds of gray matter: “I think, therefore I am.” An arguement that I pose with the late Descartes while I wonder if I am just the product of someone else’s dream. Who could dream such a dream? So elaborate and intricate that one could live an entire life within it. Why, he would have to be a god. Then reality is not this life I live. Truly, it is the seventh day. When God wakes from His rest, all of the wondering, pondering, confusion and strife that I’ve claimed as my life will cease as dreams do when their dreamers come to.