He sat in the darkness again. Every evening the same. Tortured. Praying for sleep, for rest. Insomnia chewing him, gnawing away, grinding his resolve to powder. At this point, considering how little he'd slept in his life, Jules felt older than any of his peers. Aged years by the uncountable hours he'd spent awake tossing and turning. Peering through the darkness, lost to thought.
A blue halo swung from around the beady red numbers glowing across his digital clock. They taunted him. The minutes behaving as seconds, swiftly rolling upwards between each look across the room. Jules had to stop himself from calculating how much time he had to rest before he'd need to rise for work the next day. It was a losing game of mental math he'd experienced too often. The lower the number got the more stress he'd have and the further sleep would slip away.
"Might as well give in," Jules decided as he rolled to his other side, his feet twisting within the sheets. He fluffed his pillow, and flipped it upwards before surrendering to the shadows painting his room. The usual anxieties rose like ghosts from their graves. The devastation from past heartaches costumed in self criticism, anger, and blame. Financial burdens, future projecting, he bathed in the hopeless oceans. When he'd finally gotten over his fear of the dark as a child, worse burdens arrived. Boredom. Existential dread. Obsessive thinking. And so it was. Years plagued by corrosive thoughts.
It had been bad when he was young. He'd struggled as far back as he could remember. His earliest memories were of the sounds of his family falling asleep as he sat wide eyed and trembling, terrified of the dark. Unallowed a nightlight for fire-safety. Watching in dread as his clock marched forward to midnight, the witching hour. Past that his imagination took over, hissing stories of creatures reaching for his feet from beneath the bed. Of vampires and witches hunting above the neighbourhood, spying through his windowsill. Cortisol pumping he'd hide his head under the covers, desperate to fall asleep. Of course the harder he tried for sleep the more impossible it was. A cruel cycle, night after night.
While the content of the circles had changed, the spiralling remained the same. With great effort he dragged his mind from the nows to a philosophical playground of paradoxes and thought experiments. His mind rolodexed through his favourite apparatuses on life, death, omnipotence, time, fear, and freedom. The hour rolled further, leaving Jule’s floored within his mental gymnasium in utter exhaustion. Upon reflection it was absurd how much time he'd spent contemplating such things. Worse, despite the high's he'd reach in his lifetime, how often he’d flung himself to the familiar dark abyss.
His mind moved to the Gods, and religious thoughts of the world. To the word. To oneness. He thought of Alan Watts. He contemplated the theory that we are all the Universe experiencing itself. The thought felt lonely. As it evaporated it left Jules feeling overwhelmed, and depressed. Life hadn't been going as he'd planned it, and in many ways he was dangling by a thread. Below his duvet the young man was blanketed in self doubt, and questioned every ambition his heart held. The nag of oneness returned.
“What if we all were the same thing extended, drunk with amnesia, actors in a play of self discovery and love? If that was true, and we were, then, by default, we're both the hero and the villain, as well as the writer of our own stories," Jules surmised. "Our suffering would be intentional. Intend to overwhelm us to our limits, and give us the space to surpass it. Like weight training. Like practice. For no other reason than that's where our best hero's reside. Beyond themselves. The illusion of binary bravery, that you either are or aren’t, a misnomer. The attribute isn't from an absence of fear, but the courage to face it, and go beyond.”
An unfathomable list of legends, fables, and stories tumbled within his mind. In each, the heroes had been brought to their knees, only to rise again. That's what made them so enticing. Their will. Supermen and women were boring. Every Achilles has their heel. Everyone carries their own wound.
With a deep exhale, Jule’s knew that if he were to witness himself, he'd probably enjoy the story a little more watching as he faced insurmountable odds. Even if they were terrible and arduous to live through. It only stood to reason that every victory would taste sweeter the further he pushed, the more he felt directionless, lost, and unsure.
He hoped.
It also could not, and he was cursed to suffer the entirety of his life kicking and screaming.
"Nah," he smirked to himself. "i don't go down without a fight. Even if it's against myself."
Jules looked through the bleak shadows of his room. He'd heard something interesting recently about darkness. That perhaps black wasn't an absence of light, but rather, an abundance. So much so that it overwhelms our vision, blinding us past the point of discomfort, to a state where we can only register it as flat nothingness.
He rolled again and stretched. While the thought didn't feel like it had exactly hit its mark, there was something interesting there, regardless of how far it may be from the truth. What was true was that the shadows were fine. That the darkness necessary, and especially upon an hour so late, desired.
Jules decided that everything was ok, that he could trust his body to make sure he was rested enough for the next day. If it turned out that he wasn't, he would be fine regardless. Tomorrow, or the next day he would laugh again. Have energy, be happy, euphoric. Just as he would suffer heartache, the death of others, and eventually his own. All of it inevitable. All of it fine. Perhaps, even preferable if he thought about it enough.
Not long ago he didn't exist, or at least had no memory of not being alive or conscious as Jules, and that was fine. Returning to whatever that state had been would be fine as well. Nothing worthy of worry. Which put his other anxieties in a kinder perspective. It didn't solve them of course. But he did feel somewhat alleviated, and that was something. A dash of light through the dark.
In the meantime, there was nothing else to do but be. So he returned to his breath, let the next thoughts rise, gave them thanks, then let them go. They'd return, and he'd return his attention to his nostrils and the wisps of air passing as he breathed in. Jules kept his eyes closed, shielding them from the clock. Though it could tell the time it couldn't tell him how much rest was necessary, he was trusting something else now. Something bigger.
A desire rose, perhaps he would fall to a lucid dream in the few hours left. A worry followed, what if he already had hours ago? His nostrils flared, and he blew the concern away with gratitude. The night marched on, and he let his body rest. Finding everything and nothing, joy and terror, captivation and boredom, again and again, within each breath.
Thanks for reading!
-Mr. Write
PS: Be sure to check out Exaggerated Shadow’s new release for i care, it's us on all your favourite streaming platforms!