Dangerous Hope

I try to stay awake for as long as possible, because I’m afraid of giving myself into sleep and the dreams it may bring. Dreams that reflect how I’m feeling, or dreams that reflect how I want to feel. Either option I can’t deal with. I wake up, after barely a few hours sleep. A restless sleep. An unforgiving sleep. I want to banish the sadness that was unintentionally thrust upon me. But it’s not like a sadness of seeing an emotional film, or of a family holiday being over. It’s a sadness that feels like its been injected into the arm, and the blood stream is carrying it to every recess of the body. It is both mental and physical. It’s a feeling that you can never be happy again, and this sadness will with you to your dying day.

The exhaustion from working for the first time in 6 months, the hangover, and the heavy depression pressing down on me is a toxic cocktail: the dark and heavy rain clouds outside acting as a mirror of my feelings. The lack of sleep and the pounding head make me feel like I’m in a waking dream; nothing seems real and the world seems fuzzy. I go out into the sheeting rain, wrapped up; existing in the welcomed anonymity that hats, coats, and zipped up collars provide. I walk, and I walk. I walk through the rain, I walk through the temporary teasing winters sun. I walk through the even heavier rain. I don’t know where I’m walking to, and I don’t like what I’m walking from. My legs ache and my socks are squelching in my poorly made shoes. But I don’t want to stop walking. I don’t want to be back in the stillness of the quiet room, with the unpleasant sleepiness being allowed to surround me, and the sense of melancholy being able able to suffocate me .

The walk must end though. I dread having to give into sleep once again. I dread having to wake up and experience the few seconds on blissful ignorance before being conscious to where I am, to who I am, to what I’m not. The sadness caused by trying and failing is worse than the sadness of just not trying. Because trying brings with it a glimmner of hope, just before the failure strikes. Hope is great. Hope is everything. But hope snatched away is devastating.