It's a rare night when insomnia wins the battle between asleep and awake. I watch as the clock changes from 1:38 a.m. to 1:39 a.m., the events of what is now the previous day still swirling restlessly in my mind. So many moments can occur in the space of just a few precious hours.
I reflect; I repine; I respond; I recall.
Despite my alertness, I am exhausted. My eyelids experience the strange almost salty feeling of being heavy and droopy, yet the cogs functioning behind them, trapped in a skull of thought are working overtime. My shoulders, slumped and defeated are practically hunched over the glow of the computer screen. My hair, disheveled and full of static falls in my face, framing my view. My oversized hoodie engulfs my smaller than average wrists, the only thing pacing my mind from the words that form while my anxious fingers type. I sit cross-legged in utter darkness. My knees begin to feel the low and dull ache of exhaustion. The muscles in my calves, still tired from the 10 miles they have run in the past three days.
1:47 a.m.
My thoughts are beautiful. Not because of their importance, but because of their formation. In the beauty of the stillness and silence of a new day, my thoughts are raw, pure, whole. They are not hindered by emotion, circumstance or relation. They are true. They are mine. And suddenly, they become a perfection of their own, giving life to the hope of tomorrow. Still, they are small, tired, worn from the exertion of the day.
But in the stillness of my mind, my night that is ever turning into morning, I find it is my heart that has born the brunt of the day. This calloused organ has been through the refiners fire more times than I can count. It has never failed, even when my beautiful and raw thoughts feared it would. Yet, despite it's battle scars, this small part of me is the home of all emotion, all concern, all compassion.
Here in this exhausted heart I keep the most private and precious thing I have to offer: myself. One hundred tiny chambers have been opened at least one hundred times to a friend across the country, a boy I once loved, a mother who never fails me, a brother who wraps his arm around me as I cry, a neighbor who asks how I am, a stranger I met in Montana, a family I served, a woman I desire to emulate, a God I love.
My beautiful thoughts wonder if the thousands of other chambers that have yet to be discovered will be enough to keep my calloused heart pumping, loving, caring, feeling, being.
2:00 a.m.
Another hour has passed. Another closer to my alarm waking me, beginning a new day of words. A day of emotion. A day of growth.
My thoughts now turn to the words written in the last 20 minutes. I smile in spite of myself. Nonsense, after all is my favorite genre.
1 comment:
In the words of Borat: "Very nice!"
I loved it. Not so much nonsense as I enjoy, since I could make sense of most of it. I am rather fluent in late-night/early-morning ramblings. Whenever I think of nonsense I think of going down the Rabbit Hole or Through the Looking Glass. Carroll is the King of nonsense. I think we all like at least a taste of it, otherwise his stories would have never withstood the test of time.
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