Silently The Senses Abandon Their Defenses

"Nighttime sharpens, heightens each sensation,
Darkness stirs and wakes imagination."

~ Phantom of the Opera


Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night, and in those few seconds between sleeping and waking, I see myself as I really am, and it frightens me.

During the daytime my brain is wakeful and able to create a shield, a sort of glamour over my life that maintains all the illusions, all the lies I tell myself to make my life seem better than what it is; to make ME seem better than what I am. But in that split-second moment between the sleeping illusion of dreams and the waking illusion of wishes, I see myself more clearly and brutally than at any other time.

The child I call my foster kid - "for convenience, to prevent the need for complicated explanations" - was never mine legally, he was just a boy I let live with me, and helped take care of, and loved. My work is not a real job, not anything that could support me and pay my medical bills if I attempted to live alone, merely a way to keep marginally socialised and feel useful. The man I call my ex-boyfriend was never my boyfriend, never claimed me in front of his friends or family, never loved me, and yet I continue to have affection for him, continue to keep him in my life until he chooses to walk out again. My eating habits are appalling, and probably most of my health problems are my own fault due to the fact that I don't eat right. I don't exercise nearly as much as I like to think. I'm not kind to my mother. I have no education, have wasted my intelligence, and all too often fool people into thinking I know more about a subject than I actually do. And I supposedly suffer from fibromyalgia, but I'm not 100% sure that it's not all in my head.

Perhaps you, too, suffer from night demons that claw at the fluffy swathes of self-satisfaction that you wrap yourself in during the daytime. Or perhaps you are more honest with yourself than I am. Who can say?

So often people speak of sleep as a comforting blanket that we cocoon ourselves in to give us some downtime from the world, to dream of better days, but I have always found that the waking hours are the ones where dreams and illusions abound.