I’ll Wake Up

Life is beginning to feel like a lot for me nowadays. Sometimes I imagine this is all just one nasty dream, so I close my eyes, ball up my fists, and try to wake up. Then I open my eyes, and I’m still in my tiny room that I haven’t been bothered to clean up for the past few days, and the instant noodles I’m cooking is getting burnt. I guess it’s called “instant noodles” for a reason, because I only started cooking it not too long ago (I think). I didn’t garnish it or anything like I usually do, I just said “fuck it” and threw it into the pot with some water and seasoning, and left the kitchen to make an attempt at “waking up”. I guess I’ve just been stressed a whole lot lately.

I think the worst part of experiencing this sort of stress is the awareness that there are people out there in the world who sleep and wake up, with their only job being to figure out the meaning of their lives, and having the purchasing power to do so. While I, on the other hand, currently have all meaning there is in my life boxed into my daily routine of waking up, working multiple jobs that don’t pay enough, and figuring out what to eat for dinner. It’s not a bad one, if I’m being honest. A small life can still be meaningful, however in very small meaningless ways — like having (and keeping) loved ones that care about you just as much as you care about them.

But lately, I’ve had to kill a part of myself, just so I wouldn’t breakdown from all this stress. I had to kill the part of me that knows this isn’t the sort of life I imagined myself living. It’s the part of me that wakes up with me in the morning and hurls slurs at the rising sun for its disgusting audacity. It had to die. I had to strangle it with my bare hands and watch it gasp for air till it miserably died. There is not enough time for such mundane activities like raging against the daylight, or questioning my existence, and searching for meaning and purpose. You see, I’m too poor for those sorts of things. I’d leave it to my bosses’ kids.

I had a dream last night, and in the dream, my best friend had developed some sort of cancer, but it didn’t seem so serious because we had been playing chess and whatnot. Although he had the occasional bouts of coughs during the course of the dream, it didn’t seem like a big deal. We were teamed up in a life-sized chess match against some other individuals that I can’t remember. I don’t remember who won, but in the last moments of the dream, my friend slumped, and seemed to have had a wave of extreme exhaustion wash over him. He seemed really tired, and was about to go unconscious. I tried my best to urge him not to close his eyes, due to my fear of him dying, and he really did seem to have been trying his very best not to go unconscious. Maybe he harboured the same fear I did.

Then finally, as tears began rolling down my eyes, he put his hand on my shoulder and said to me in a very reassuring manner — “Don’t worry, I’ll wake up.”