My bestfriend Morpheus

For the past two days I’ve been feeling a bit sick. After all the cheerful walking, hopping and skipping around the city I did during the weekend my irritable joints seemed to realize that they’d been overused once again and collectively agreed to remind me (in a very painful way) that they do not take to such unmindful abuse kindly. I don’t blame them, though, as I often tend to forget my body has certain physical limitations that are supposed to keep me from altogether killing myself out of sheer folly and adventurism. When I woke up really early today for my review classes I knew it was one of those days when I’d rather stay in bed and lie in until around noon instead of getting up and insisting on starting the day. My body was aching everywhere, as if I was mercilessly mauled and thrown against the mint green walls and bashed against the floor while I was peacefully asleep. Still, both my aged cellphone’s loud alarm clock and my equally loud father would not leave me alone to rest and just have at least a moment’s peace, so I forced myself to get up and get going anyway. I clumsily wobbled out of my room and got a glass of cold water.

I sat in the dining room for quite a while, blankly staring out the window while sipping my water and waiting for my dull senses to wake up and become reoriented with reality after hours of oblivious hibernation. I kept on glancing at the wall clock and the hands of time that moved and ticked and tocked in a precisely measured pacing, mentally calculating how much more time I had left before I’d be late for class. I’ve never been good at anything remotely related to mathematics but I soon figured I didn’t have too much time left. I needed to leave in a few minutes if I wanted to get there in time, given the way jeepney drivers seem to wait forever just to get a passenger these days. And given the way most of my body was throbbing like they were about to explode, I couldn’t have moved fast enough to make it to class without running late or looking like a total wreck and a big, sick mess, anyway, even if I did leave then. It all just felt so wrong. Painfully wrong. So I crawled back to bed, pulled up my thick blanket right up to my neck and went back to sleep.

There really are days like this, times when you’re so sick and tired and simply can never be at your best but you still have to deal with the trivial, tedious details of everyday life. There are days when you feel so sore all over but still have to endure the tortures of public transit and traffic just to get to work or school, days when you feel so weak and flimsy but still have to plumb the kitchen sink just to wash the dishes without having an ocean emerge in your own kitchen, days when you just want to stop living for a while but can’t. Sometimes I even wonder why we do the things we do, eating, walking, breathing, talking, feeling, watching, listening, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, going to school, working to put some money in the bank (or some department store’s cash registers), doing the household chores, spreading nasty rumors about the neighbors, dressing up to impress the strangers we meet while walking in the sidewalk, rallying to campaign against animal cruelty, when at the very end of it all, all it does is exhaust us and tire us and drain us and fatigue us.

Don’t you ever get tired of living? Of doing the many complicated things we humans do? Of carrying the weight of the entire world on your shoulders? Of trying to figure out the jigsaw puzzle that is your life? Don’t you sometimes wish you could just vanish into thin air? Don’t you sometimes wish time would just pause and the world would just stop turning, or that you could at least stop thinking about all the things you can’t help but think about or stop doing all the things you can’t help but do? I do. Most of the time. And when I do, I lock myself up in my room, cry, write poetic suicide notes, cry some more, slit my wrists and watch as the blood trickles out of me like filthy red rivers of sin. Of course not. I sleep. And when I sleep, I meet up with an old friend who never fails to please me and ease the pains of my existence, a friend who the wise old Greeks called Morpheus, the god of dreams. He’s always there to welcome me just outside the gates of slumber, in the bizarre yet beautiful realm of sleep, with my colorful memories, hopes, aspirations, ambitions, fantasies and whatever other sweet gift he has in store for me. He reminds me of all the things I was, all the things I’ve always wanted to be, all the things I thought I’d be, all the things I think I’ll be, all the things I hope and dream I’ll be, and all the things I’d never thought I’d be. He reminds me of everything that’s been a part of me, everything that’s been a part of my life. He takes me to places I’ve never been to, shows me things I’ve never seen, makes me think thoughts I’ve never thought. And he makes me forget all that is waiting for me when I wake up. All of it. What a friend.

I’ve always believed that when all else fails, sleep. When you’ve tried everything but nothing seems to work, all there is left for you to do is escape, run away, hide, sleep. You die for a few happy hours, and with that ephemeral death all your worries and troubles disappear and die with you. The world comes to a screeching halt, and everything, every petty thought and every fleeting idea that usually crowds your mind just fades away. When you’re asleep nothing can possibly disturb you or scare you or bother you. And if ever there is, say a horrible nightmare, you know that the moment you wake up it will be gone, that it can’t really be something to worry about. While you’re asleep you move in a different dimension, one that’s sometimes a bit strange and weird as well, a world that’s often more beautiful and honest and simple than the one you move in when you’re awake.

I woke up just around lunch time. I had another strange dream. I always have strange dreams, especially when I sleep during the day. I had already missed half a day and dragged myself (especially my right foot) just to attend the other half of my review classes. Limping. I wished I had not. It was terrible. Excruciating. Aside from the constant agony of my painful body parts pulsating to remind me they still had not forgotten my exploiting them, the lecture bored me in ways I cannot explain. It was just pure suffering that made my brain hurt just as bad as my joints did. It was something I should’ve just slept through. I’ll try that next time. If ever I decide to wake up and leave my bestfriend Morpheus to attend some tiresome lecture, that is.