It is 3 am, and the ghosts of insomnia arrive...floating around just out of reach, whispering over your shoulder, tickling your lacrimal glands...you can hear them, feel their presence, know their effect....but you can neither touch them nor feel them.
Apparitions glimpsed and stories whispered the night before Julius Ceasar's cataclysmic death...these are but small manifestations of the inhabitants of the wee hours. More terrifying still, are those you cannot see - voices hurling accusations, screaming lies a more rational mind could reason out as untruths, the loss of everything as it should be and everything as you know it is...And then, there are the disguises - Hideous creatures peering out from faces loved and known, complicated plots hidden deep within trusted advice, hatred and disgust seeping from the pores of hearts held close, cutting words hidden in some mental box brushed over on the surface with the powder of honesty and care - crawling out of the shadows and into your head...A masquerade of hooded jeering apparitions, circling round and round, crowding closer and closer, sucking you deeper and deeper into that dark whirlpool of inadequacy which lies dormant in most minds.
Finally, the knifing finale - the feeling of abandonment...that on a shelf lies rows of goodbyes, one for everyone you know; and tears, for the permanent departure of those you love. For once gone, they will never return, and everybody leaves in the end. Or so the voices menace.
And so, the tears keep falling, and the fingers keep typing...fighting off those incessant cries, vainly battling to block off their words, as the sadness and despair deepens, as mental walls weaken, and you feel your mind yielding. Somewhere, just beyond the rim of consciousness, you hear your own voice screaming, pleading for help from somebody...anybody!
But nobody can hear you. It is 3am and they are all fast asleep.
PS: It is easy to be a sunflower in the day, but when the sun sets, there is nothing to gaze at or follow, except the darkness around, and that is when the mind closes in on itself.
