In spite of all he had dealt with recently, he found himself talking with no one, facing his own fears of solitude by just not shutting up.
“I COULD go to bed, but I’m just not tired,” he said. His roommates were both gone and he had to confront the concerns he had about spending too much time alone. In his head he was prone to extreme thinking of dire consequences with his response being somewhat typical to Homer Simpson’s response to his wife when left to fend for himself. (“Of course, none of this would have happened if you had been here to keep me from acting stupid.”)
He often wondered what life would be like living alone, without any consequences of his malfunctioning brain. He knew that upstairs it was just a nesting ground for mice and other small rodent creatures, with their own little habitrail that wound its way through his cranium. It was a pleasant experience for some other life form, but not so much for himself. Their squeaks and squawks a language that disturbed him and set him on edge.
So he continued to mumble to himself and try and debate what was better: staying awake and attempting to accomplish things or going to sleep and being forced to wake up the next morning and address another day. These decisions that came so easily and without any sort of thought to most were debated heavily in his mind. He might decide upon other things at a spur of the moment but the routine events often caused him the most consternation. He laid out the options and then the pros and cons of each, only to realize once he was done with one section that there were things he had missed in previous pros or cons that might be worth noting.
After surfing through the same websites for the third time, he decided it was time to shut things down and go to bed where, although sleep may not come quickly, at least he could find some time to ruminate on ideas of what to do next with his life and his tomorrow – the things that often brought relaxation. He didn’t know how to shut those thoughts off, though, and so he dealt with them as best as he could. He focused on them and wrung them through his mind until he was so tired of thinking of them they would be banished for at least a few minutes.
Once in bed, just one sheet over him, he tried out the various positions of the bed as though testing the mattress for the first time: stomach, left side, right side, back – he listened to the rhythm of the ceiling fan and the white noise made by the box fan as it blew warm air out through the window. It would be one of these two noises (or a combination of both) that drew him to sleep and kept him distracted from the other noises he heard that would normally keep him on edge.
Although sleep came slowly, he eventually found his slumber, wherein awaited a life as a foster parent to three puppies, living with a guy from a writing class, and the tale of an incredibly shrinking dog and the electronic gravestone that displayed information in both Mandarin, Cantonese and English. If any of this was supposed to make sense, he wasn’t sure, and his interest in visiting a Jungian therapist in order to achieve some clarity for the tremendously outrageous unconscious thoughts was quite low.
Therefore he woke up the next morning, ate breakfast, and made his way to work, and having exchanged pleasantries with his co-workers went back to living in his own head at his desk, even though people were embedded around him. It was times like this when, left to himself, he wondered whose responsibility it was to keep him from thinking asinine things. He did his best to focus on his breathing and the responsibilities at hand and not so much the scurrying thoughts in his mind.
He wondered how he could get anyone to understand what he was saying or thinking or feeling. His life was filled with nights of quiet desperation, things reminiscent of a rich poem with psychoanalysis. These things made the moment but weren’t easily accessible to those who did not share the same home as he and the mice he kept upstairs. They burrowed and foraged for food and nestled into a bedding of cedar chips and Kleenex replete in the upper part of his skull – a nice place for them to call home.
