Throwback: Insomnia Brings the Memories Back

Written November 16, 2010

Another night with insomnia keeping me company. That and the comfort music thumping a pattern into my addled brain cells. It's funny how Facebook and sleeplessness do these things to you, but I find my thoughts slipping into places they hadn't been to in awhile.

I don't really know why I'm surprised, but I've tried to move on. No, really. But I guess I can't kid myself for long. Those things I try to forget, the memories that lie in wait in that locked room, aren't going nowhere.

And besides, I did promise. I promised myself that I'd go back there, and pull the covers off, and maybe even do a little bit of dusting. Mostly, I think all I want to do is just sit and bask in the atmosphere of a world I never wanted to leave.

Maybe those of you out there who still have what I could never have don't really see the point to it. Maybe you guys don't understand why I flinch every time someone comes out with that "I Hate It Here" line. That night, when the past beckoned to me, I knew it wasn't really time yet. But tonight, the magic in the air is slightly different. It shimmers and offers me a protection I know I will need, a protection against the pain encased in the past.

Why do I talk of pain? Well, perhaps because that first year after I lost it all (as I like to put it, in my own melodramatic terms), I fought it. I fought the realization and the reality. I thought pretending that it hadn't happened would bring it all back. I thought I could put back everything, like with super glue. That was the first reality check for a sixteen year old teenager, the realization that some consequences to our actions cannot be repealed. That some changes are here to stay.

So denial wasn't really going to help.

So I did the next best thing, which was something I wouldn't ever have seen myself doing. I went ahead and pretended like my whole life up until then had never existed. I refused to think about the past. And I did rather well at it. Slowly the faces that haunted my dreams began to fade. And the memories became rather vague. Names danced tantalizingly at arm's length when I needed them. Which wasn't all that often either.

Now it's just an idea... something good that I knew from a hundred years ago, and which has left a happy impression.

But it's home, and that's what makes it important.