Insomnia
Wherein our narrator struggles with a
particularly persistent disorder.
Last night I couldn't sleep. It could have been
the half-kilo of barbecued pork I ate, or the half-dozen cigarettes I smoked
over the course of the later evening, or perhaps the initiation of daylight
savings time, or whatever. I tried to sleep at midnight, 1 AM, 2 AM. Finally
at 3:30-ish I closed the iBook, pulled up the covers, and drifted off to sleep -
for all of three-and-a-half hours before I had to wake up and begin the ritual
de lo habitual. So I've been halfway a zombie today, not really sleepy, not
really tired, but not really awake, either. I put in a good showing, got some
work done at AFTRS, but spent plenty of time reading the Web. So far, fifty
thousand Los Angelenos have been evacuated in the face of the growing fires.
Fourteen people have been killed. Six hundred fifty homes (at least) have been
destroyed. And there's no respite in sight, because the Santa Annas keep
blowing the flames higher, into the stands of dead pine trees, killed by a
bark-eating beetle and the years-long
drought.
Worse yet, the fire has spread
to Kearny Mesa in San Diego, which is home to my sister's favorite Korean
restaurants, and a regular haunt of ours when she lived in Pacific Beach. Worse
yet, it's only a few miles away from the houses of my cousins Dominic, Sandra,
Nicholas and Cindy. I doubt the fire will spread that far into urban San Diego,
but then I wouldn't have believed it could spread into Kearny Mesa, either. And
apparently someone has been throwing lit matches out the side of a gray-colored
van. Are these fires the work of arsonists? I've long believed that the
ultimate terrorist attack on Los Angeles would be coordinated brush fires set
throughout the city. Particularly in the canyons of the Hollywood Hills and Bel
Air. Is this that? I doubt it. There are far too few fires - though they do
seem to be multiplying. But I could imagine a day when a hundred fires spring
up in a few hours time around Los Angeles. That would be terrorism, for sure.
And Los Angeles would burn.
It's hard
to contemplate. But I do believe it will
happen.
But back to my insomnia.
Somewhere in the early morning hours, as I stared up at the ceiling, tired yet
unable to rest, I got very angry. That could have been the pork digesting -
meat does increase the
yang,
evidentially - but it really didn't matter. I raged at everyone whom I had a
grievance, got up and fired off two far-too-terse emails - in response to others
I'd received over the last several days - and realized that if I continued along
that vein, I'd put myself in a world of hurt, saying things that maybe I didn't
mean, or at least didn't mean to say. One of them actually felt good to send, a
kiss-off message, short and sweet, to a fellow I'd very briefly dated this
summer, who then just disappeared. What a complete lack of class. Hadn't
heard from him since sometime in July, and then, on the Friday before last, I
get this load of
merde
in my mailbox, with the subject line a terse "Read
This":
Have you ever wondered which
hurts the most? Saying something and
wishing you hadn't or saying nothing
and wishing you had?
I guess the most important things are
the hardest things to say. Don't
be
afraid to tell someone you love them. If you do, they might break
your heart...if you don't, you might
break theirs.
Have you ever decided not to become a
couple because you were so afraid
of
losing what you already had with that person? Your heart decides
whom it likes and whom it doesn't. You
can't tell your heart what to do.
It
does it on its own...when you least suspect it, or even when you
don't want it
to.
Have you ever wanted to love someone
with everything you had, but that
other person was too afraid to let
you? Too many of us stay walled up
because we are too afraid to care too
much...for fear that the other
person
does not care as much, or even at all.
Have you ever denied your feelings for
someone because your fear
of rejection
was too hard to handle? We tell lies when we are afraid.
Afraid of what we don't know, afraid
of what others will think, afraid
of
what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the
thing we fear grows
stronger.
Life is all about risks and it
requires you to jump. Don't be a person
who has to look back and wonder what
you would have done, or could have
had.
* What would you do if every time
you fell in love you had to say
good-bye?
*What would you do if every
time you wanted someone they would never
be
there?
*What would you do if your best
friend died tomorrow and you never got
to tell them how you felt? (even if it
is that you don't care anymore)
*What
would you do if you loved someone more than ever and you couldn't
have
them?
*What would you do if you never
got the chance to say I am friends with
all of my family and they know I love
them?
People live, but people die. I want
to tell you that you are a friend.
If
you died tomorrow (God Forbid) you would be in my heart. Would I be
in yours? If you care about me as
much as I care about you then you
will
send this back.
You might be best
friends one year, pretty good friends the next year,
don't talk that often the next, and
don't want to talk at all the year
after that. So, I just wanted to say,
even if I never talk to you again
in
my life, you are special to me and you have made a difference in my
life. I look up to you, respect you,
and truly cherish you. Most of all
I
CARE about friends.
OK, so I
read it. I can't figure out what it means. Did he write this or is it just one
of those stupid email-virus-meme-thingies, which are basically someone's
Hallmark Greeting Card thoughts vomited into the ether? It doesn't read as
though it comes from a person, or rather it doesn't read as though it comes from
a rational person. But then this person wasn't necessarily entirely rational -
something I knew from the get-go, but then, sanity is overrated. Politeness,
on the other hand, is not. And my reply reflected my continuing displeasure
with his treatment of me - something which he neither apologized for nor even
acknowledged. "Whatever. Whatever." Perhaps he is too crazy for me, or
perhaps he's just saying he'd like to be friends. But if so, couldn't he have
done it more personally, and addressed me directly? I don't understand it, and
clearly I don't understand him. So that door is better closed. And tie time
for closing came at 2 AM, when I lay awake and decided that, among the other
bothers which needled my mind, one of them was an ex-not-even-quite-boyfriend
who seems to think he needs to offer explanations that aren't wanted, to doors
that aren't open.
Meanwhile, my city
burns. And I wonder if I will be able to sleep tonight.
Posted: Mon - October 27, 2003 at 05:34 PM