Drifting

It’s late at night. I can’t sleep. The clock says it’s 1:12. My train of thought is leading me through my memories. I don’t have music on right now. I don’t have people talking to me. All I have is silence. So much of it that I can hear my own heartbeat. I grabbed this sheet of paper and a pencil because I don’t have anything else to do. Without any distractions all I’m left with are unfamiliar feelings. When you’re still up this late at night, you start thinking of things. The first thing you think of is the time on the clock. You don’t want it to go up. You want it to stay at the time it is for however long it takes for you to fall asleep so you’re not tired the next morning. Then you start to wonder when you’re really going to go to sleep. My eyes aren’t tired, and my body is numb and dull, but it doesn’t want to go to rest. I start thinking about dreams. About what I’m going to think about when I’m asleep. It’s crazy, but the dream I had the night before was a date with a girl at a very high balcony overlooking a city at night. It was perfect, at least I thought it was. It was cold, and the night was dark except for the city lights below, resembling the nonexistent stars in the sky that they replaced. I couldn’t see the girl’s face, but I knew what she felt. And she knew what I felt, too. We were embracing for warmth and all we did was enjoy the moment. We didn’t have to think because we weren’t alone with our thoughts. We had each other to distract us from thinking about anything too hard. But now I’m alone in my room, on my desk, with my thoughts. I don’t have anyone to distract me, so all I can think about is having someone to distract me. When I woke up from that dream, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to that girl. My head spun and I watched the world go round until my eyes saw the ceiling of my room. The strong emotion I felt quickly vanished until all I was left with was a dreadful feeling of hopelessness. One that was endless and terrifying, one that knew no bounds. Instead of the warmth from the girl I had the warmth of my blanket. Instead of the silence of the night of our wordless emotion I heard a voice telling me to wake up for school. I take another glance at the clock. It’s 1:33. When you get deeper into the night like where I am right now, you start thinking of more things. You feel like you’re on a tiny wooden boat in the middle of the ocean. It’s dark outside, past my closed blinds, and it’s dark in my room except for the subtle glow of my lamp. So you start drifting in this boat. You don’t have anything but the clothes on your back. It’s stormy and the sky is black only when lightning isn’t flashing with a thunderous boom. The torrent of rain drenches you until you’re sure you’re going to die from the cold. The rocky waves shake your boat and cause you to rise and dip extreme heights that make you sick. The only thing you smell is aqueous salt. You’re kilometres from any land and this is what you’re left with until you find any. For hours, days, months. The storm is relentless and it might last the whole night, the whole day, even. All you’re left with are thoughts. And yet, in the colossal din of the roar of the ocean, you don’t think of your survival, or if the storm is going to destroy your boat, no. You start thinking of people. Your life. Maybe a friend you had in grade school that you don’t talk to anymore. Maybe a girl that flirted with you relentlessly but you never noticed. I don’t know, random people. Then, after thinking about people, you start having regrets. How come I never talked back to that kid in grade school? How come I never asked that girl out? My hand is getting a little tired, but I can still keep going, keep writing. All I have are thoughts and all I have is time because one night feels endless when you can’t sleep. The clock says 1:51. Okay. Not even two in the morning yet. I can do this all night. I start thinking about how much I think of other people. Random kids in class that I’ve only talked to a couple of times. I start to wonder how often any of them think of me. I don’t get random messages from them wanting to chat, but I don’t give any of those out to anyone either. There’s really no way to show your appeal of wanting to connect with someone, even with all the social media nowadays. There’s still no way to tell people you just want to chat with them about real things. Maybe I’m overthinking, and that's exactly what you should do. But still, you can’t stop thinking about how you could’ve done this, or how you could’ve done that, you really can’t. All right, my eyes are beginning to get droopy. This is good. I have to keep this up, anything to get me to sleep, anything to distract me from my thoughts. Okay. I take a deep breath and exhale. I do that a few more times. But it doesn’t matter, the thoughts come back, no matter what I try to do. The tracks won’t end for this train of thought. I start thinking of that boat again. In the middle of the ocean. And then I start to think I’d rather be there in that stormy sea than be awake at night with enough silence to drown in my thoughts. Then I think about what I’d truly feel like on that boat. I can think all I want. Think about people, places, feelings, reality. But maybe I’d actually be distracted with trying to survive. But then I realize that’s wrong. Right now, relentlessly awake in my room late at night, alone with my thoughts, I feel like I’m fighting to survive as well. And yet that’s not what I’m thinking of. I’m thinking about people, places, feelings, reality. I feel like I’m losing my mind. My heart rate’s getting faster and my breathing is getting rapid as if I’m on that boat in the middle of the stormy ocean. I think about what the ocean really is. Maybe it’s my mom or dad, or my friends or my classmates. Maybe it’s my house or my neighbourhood, or my town or my country. Maybe it’s my sense of dread and hopelessness, or the emotion I felt that night on the balcony with that girl. Maybe it’s the periodic table of the elements or the fundamental particles of physics, the stars of the cosmos or the darkest depths of a black hole. Maybe it’s being a kid, being an adult, and being an old man. Whatever the ocean is, I’m on a boat drifting in it. And I’m alone. But I hear the roar of the waves and the boom of the thunder and I feel like I’m watching the world go round. Yet despite all that is a strange sense of absolute serenity within me. Peace in a storm that blinds me from having to think. Anything, please, that stops me from having to think. It’s 2:17 on the clock. My thoughts aren’t stopping, as relentless as the torrent of rain hammering my small wooden boat. Okay. I flex my writing hand a bit. I take a look around, trying to make sense of my surroundings of the world I live in to distract me from my world of thoughts which don’t make sense at all. I see my hoodie hung on the rack on the wall next to my door. That’s something real, I tell myself. I can touch it, feel it, wear it. It’s corporeal and it exists. The heavy emotion in my heart I felt with that girl on the balcony? That’s not real. That’s not real. I can’t touch it, feel it, wear it. Yet it’s realer than anything I’ve ever known in my life. I don't even remember when I felt it, or the date it was when I was with that girl, or where we were. In fact, I don’t know her name. We shared a meaningful moment and I don’t know her name? Wait, was she just a dream? At the top of my head I can’t recall having her number on my phone, but she has to be real. I shake my head. Do I have a migraine? It feels like it but I know I don’t. The clock, I have to check it again. How far am I into the night? It says 2:33. I’m not too far, and I’m still not sleepy. I have no one to talk to, to share my thoughts with, to say I love you to. I can’t think of a single person I can chat with this late. I start to think about how many people around the world in this exact moment are awake in their room late at night, alone with their thoughts, just like me. I want to talk to them. I also think of how many people are lost, drifting on a boat in the middle of the ocean at this exact moment. I want to talk to them too. I realize that talking to either of them would not make a difference. We are all drowning yet alive, fighting for survival amidst a sea of thoughts. Real life is our boat, our distraction. When it's gone, like me and now, we have to swim. And my legs are getting tired. I can’t sleep. I want to sleep. I’m tired of waking up every morning to brush my teeth and go to school but now I want it more than ever. Anything to get me to sleep, to enter a dream world, then see the sunlight of morning. A new day to make more memories about the world that are going to wash away into the endless ocean of thoughts I’m going to end up in again the next time I can’t sleep late at night. I always get lost in the ocean. I always think I can make it across on my wooden rowboat but then the storms come and I learn it was a bad idea. But I do it again. And again. As if there’s something on the other side that I need. Right, the clock. I have to check the clock. It’s 2:47. I still have a long way to go to finish the night. It’s okay. I think I’m fine. I feel a tiny bit tired although I know if I try to go to bed I’ll stay awake and still won’t be away from my thoughts. Writing them down here makes me feel kind of better. I start thinking about what I’m going to be doing, where I’m going to be, and what type of person I’m going to become in the future. I might be even more of an ordinary person in the future, or I might be even more of a mess than what I’m feeling right now in the future. Maybe the normality of the world will get to me and I’ll be the same as everyone else, or maybe I’ll be even deeper and more insightful than I could ever imagine now. I start thinking about how life is so boring. All I get are sleepless nights and tired mornings and everything in between. There’s nothing exciting about being a modern human and it’s hard to find purpose in anything or care about anything. Everything I do has lost its meaning. But everything I do in my dreams is different. I don’t know. I don't know a lot of things. I need to finish my thoughts because I’m going to do a final attempt to go to sleep. I’ve been thinking for a while now, and I want to sleep so bad that I’m not going to wait all night to get tired because the clock says it’s 3:12, and it's getting late I would have should have could have gone to sleep but I didn't want to, but I did but I guess I really didn’t because here I am writing about my thoughts on a sheet of paper that’s running out of space with a pencil and an eraser and just jotting down what I think and what I remember as I drift along the stormy sea with the thunder and the pouring rain and the waves so high I don’t know how I’m surviving on my boat because it surely should have broken by now and I should be slowly drowning, sinking to the bottom depths of the black ocean, screaming for some truth in life that I should find out myself but I’m too impatient to so it’s going to cost me a lot such as sleep and sanity from being alone with my thoughts too long which are rampant yet I barely have anything to say and I think my thoughts have enough meaning to be worth writing down or that there's some profound truth behind them but really there isn’t and I have too many thoughts so I know if I start writing them now it will be a long time until I finish and then I’ll never get any sleep or be rested for my day tomorrow and already I’ve listened to the scratching of my pencil on this sheet of paper for too long now and it’s all I hear please make it stop please I’m begging someone anyone I can’t I really can’t and my hand’s getting tired because I’m writing really fast now but I don’t care and I don’t care if I sound like a desperate madman too but I need to see that girl on the balcony again and the only way to do so is to sleep so I want to sleep so bad but I can’t because I’m still drifting on that boat in the middle of the ocean no I remember now I’m sinking but I’m not drowning I'm still alive somehow but I need to die so I can lose my thoughts and enter sleep so in the cold dark water as I’m falling and drifting to the bottom I grab my throat and one would think I’m gasping for air but really I’m doing the opposite and I’m trying to lose it all as fast as I can and I watch the bubbles escape my mouth but it doesn't matter because I'm still alive, still alive in this rock-ball floating in space, drifting across the universe lost and alone with its thoughts, those thoughts being me and my family and my friends and civilization and nature because we’re all equally existing on its surface yet it is completely equally indifferent to all of us and our feelings just like how I’m always indifferent to my thoughts and I always try to drown them out by distracting my mind with the noise of living and I’m sorry thoughts I’m sorry I really am please forgive me thoughts and please leave me alone for just this one night so I can go to sleep all I want is to go to sleep all I need is to go to sleep and I get it now I truly do you've been mad at me for so long a time now because I haven’t talked with you in a while just like those kids in grade school or that girl who flirted with me but I didn’t know and I know you’re really mad and I’m sorry I promise to talk with you every now and then I know you’re the one keeping me awake tonight I know that now and I know it’s because we haven’t talked in a while and that it's essential we talk with each other more because in the din of everyday life we get so busy and we go so fast that we never have time to speak with our thoughts and we need to in order to stay sane in the mundanity of reality and I get that now thank you for teaching me this please let me go to sleep I have talked with you finally after so long and all I needed was a sleepless night to do it maybe that’s why everyone gets sleepless nights every so often because in this crazy loud and fast world we live in we need to take time to sort through our feelings and actually think and open our eyes and sometimes in life when we feel too down all we have to do is stop.

I understand now. We’re all in the same boat. Sinking and floating in an ocean. We’re not lost, yet we don’t know our way either. We’re just drifting. That’s all.

I yawn and notice my eyes are tired. The clock says 3:40. Nowhere near morning, yet I’m glad all the same. I stretch my neck, flex my fingers, and get ready to go to bed. Then I finally put down the pencil.

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