And then I felt it.

It fell- my heart

It fell from my chest and I didn’t even try to stop it

It broke.

I swear I felt it break

It broke mercilessly and nothing could stop it.

I felt it.

Bits of my heart in the rubble

I hear it wail in the heartache

I feel it.

The wreckage that is my heart

I feel it scratching against my skin

I let it consume me.

The post COST first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

I’m struggling to hold on to my sister hanging from a cliff. I don’t know how we’re in the midst of an Armageddon, running for our lives and fighting off demons. Like quicksand, the ground beneath us is pulling us towards the earth’s core. Each step feels so heavy it pulls our feet down as we try to outrun them. Every time we stop, the ground below us starts falling like the earth was hungry for a million years and now it’s ready to swallow us whole so we keep running. Sometimes it feels like my joints have given up, and I’m only running because I think I am. I feel every little pain; I can feel the small scraps of stones bouncing up and hitting me as I run past it; there are broken glasses, nails and sharp edged pebbles that poke through my worn out sneakers and into my feet. I can feel all the open wounds. I can feel them throbbing. I can feel the blood soaking through my socks.

And then suddenly, like nothing happened, everything comes to a halt. Eerie stillness envelops us, as my breath finally starts to normalize. I turn to look at my sister but I can’t see her. Frantically, I’m crying out her name and looking around only to realize that we’re almost at the peak of the hill. There’s nothing but dust that covers the valleys around us. I hear my name but it sounds like it’s coming from underneath the ground. I place my ear to the ground and slither my way towards the sound. Finally, I’m at the edge of the cliff and she’s there, hanging by a branch. Almost involuntarily, I fling my arm towards her, desperately trying to reach her. I got a hold of her right hand but I can feel my body getting hot; it starts from my head- it starts to feel like it’s going to explode from pressure, then my ears get warmer. I can feel the sweat beginning to gather near my temples, my palms are also getting sweaty. I can feel her slowly slipping through my fingers. I can feel the sweat from my brows, gathering at the tip of my nose, leaving my body and falling. I’m watching it free fall, trying if I can see it reach the bottom, listening for a splatter. I don’t hear it reach the bottom. My heart is pounding right out of my chest. I’m barely holding on with my feet buried in the gravel.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE IN OUR DREAMS?

Before I could wander off into that thought; in a flash, mustering inhuman-like strength, I yank her whole body up and we lay panting and gasping for air. That’s something admirable about dreams. Anything is possible; nothing is impossible. We just burst out laughing for a good few seconds. This feels weirdly wholesome. Like clockwork, it’s 1:00 AM in the real world but I have no way of knowing this because I’ve been told you can’t tell time in a dream. It’s got something to do with our left and right hemispheres; like how one works without the other.

The brain is perpetually in a complicated relationship; sometimes it prefers to work alone and sometimes it’s a needy friend who constantly craves for attention from the other side. I say this because I’ve read that when one part of our brain tries to sleep more quickly than the other, we are jolted awake. Talk about petty!

Right on cue, my body also responds with a jolt. And suddenly I realize that I can’t move.

Oh no. Not this again!

It’s midsummer and I hardly have a blanket on me but it feels like boulders and boulders of rocks atop me. I’m screaming for help but nothing escapes my mouth other than frail breaths. My jaws are so heavy. The pain is excruciating.

10 years ago, at a campfire, my friend told me to “always move your toes” when you feel like you’re trapped or you can’t move or talk in your sleep. And I’ve remembered that even after all these years because I’ve had to use that more often than I would like to admit. I don’t quite understand the logic to it but I don’t think she did either. It’s just one of those things you say and it passes on from one to the next.

The gut wrenching moment comes when I realize that this is happening in real time. I’m awake and aware of what is happening to my body. I can feel the stiffness in my bones. My breaths: short and stunted. I can feel the room- I can feel the breeze from the open window beside my bed, I can hear the rattling of the ceiling fan above me and I can feel his presence at the edge of my bed. So quiet, so tall, he hovers over my bed. I wonder why he isn’t doing anything. I’m anticipating an attack. Isn’t that always the case? The action in itself isn’t nearly as horrific as the anticipating thought.

“It’s always darkest before the storm” because I guess, at least we see lightning in the storm.

My eyes are shut. I don’t know if I’m trying to keep them shut or if I am unable to open them. The darkness somehow, is so comforting. I could turn on my bedside lamp but the horror of seeing something in the light paralyzes me.  My limbs are rigid. I can’t move my body, not the slightest bit; not even to touch my Bible that I keep under my pillow. And I’m thinking of all the ways that I can find comfort if I just reached under my pillow. It’s not that far away- if I just turn, if I just shrug my shoulder a little, if I just move my head towards it, if I just…

There’s just something about being bested by your own subconscious that breaks you as a human being.

I don’t want to give up but as I’m struggling, he’s smirking at my feeble attempts, hushing me, drying my tears. He climbs onto the bed, lies down beside me and holds me. My back is turned to him and he lifts his head, his lips pressed to my ear, and whispers, “never sleep again.” I feel a gush of wind enter my ear like someone tried to blow dry it. Suddenly I can open my eyes. I’m in a fetal position, in a pool of my own sweat. The curtains are dancing with the rhythm of the breeze and I reach under my pillow.

The post THE MAN AT THE EDGE OF MY BED first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

Think about what you’ve wanted to be as a kid; for most of us, the world was happy and kind and we could be anything we wanted to be. Fast forward and here we are, writing a blog in the midst of a lockdown, reading posts and articles about the “curve” and listening to podcasts and news that tell us everything that is wrong with the world.

Such a downer, isn’t it?

We’ve wanted to be medical health professionals to save someone, we wanted to be educationists to teach someone, we wanted to be artists to inspire someone, we wanted to be in businesses to help someone, we wanted to be politicians to uplift someone and we wanted to be in services to assist someone.

Right now, the world is seemingly vague and with leaden steps, all that we worked towards is piling up and becoming what I would like to call, TRASH.

We’re still pushed towards a lot of deadlines and expectations that seem meaningless now and I think that what we were taught as children: “to follow our dreams” has gone right into the gutter because all I dream about is larger than life cats that birth humans with whiskers and I’m not even a cat person.

What has left me totally flabbergasted is the idea that we have brought these pandemic woes upon ourselves. I mean it’s hard to admit mistakes and own up to what the world says is our own fault but 3 months into this lockdown and I think i’m starting to believe the heavy truth that left me astonished in the first place: we are terrible at this; at being humans.

I don’t speak for everybody and I’ll bet my life on it because even to blog has taken me several years- I’ve always been afraid of what my ideas might sound like to some and I’m not all for “constructive criticism” however immature that makes me sound. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this realization has brought me full circle to look at my own life and see how much time I’ve wasted being bothered by something that is innately us.

So, yes, we’re not the best at being humane towards our own species and that’s another problem altogether. But right now, trying to live with a virus that has the power to wipe out humanity has left me in an existential crisis that maybe most of us don’t want to address and the only way to come out of this still standing strong is perhaps, take a moment and look at the lives that we’ve created and fostered and nurtured into something so terrible that I’ll bet the devil is even afraid to tempt us anymore. Maybe pondering upon this thought will push us to do something a little more than pass the blame and live perpetually smacking our heads and gasping at headlines.

It all sounds so dreadful and I sure didn’t think this is how my first blog was gonna go- a Friday afternoon, sitting in the sun, thinking about a cat that birthed humans and writing this almost depressing post about what it is like to be human in 2020.

The post PANDEMIC WOES first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.