Once in a Blue Moon

The Witching Hour

June 16, 2009 at 6:10 am (Life) (insomnia, scent, sleep, smell, thoughts, writing)

Once night falls over my house, and my sisters and my parents go to bed, I tip-toe out of my room to muted lights and silence. Silence is easy. In the dead of night, it isn’t deafening, as you’d think. Every little noise I make is a symphony, completely embraced and enthralled by the empty air. Beautiful. This always feels like my time, my place to be.

I used to dread these sleepless nights. Insomnia would hit at 11:21, on the dot, and I would lie in my bed staring at the ceiling. Resolutions from earlier in the day would melt away as doubt crept in, and not even closing my eyes and willing sleep to come over me could herald its coming. I’d read, I’d go online, I’d draw. Nothing worked. Nowadays, I can knock out like a light, but not tonight. I took a nap earlier today. It’s probably why I’m not tired in the slightest now, at 2:24 AM, especially when I have a six mile bike ride planned out for tomorrow morning. Exercise is easy to talk about, even easier to think about, but downright hard to do. I’ve never been the type to run from things. When the going gets tough, I buckle down in my down comforter and sweats to wait it out. Confrontations are better than anything else, but leave me empty and cold. With some people, I wish I only had the guts to provoke them. I wish that I could just stop being such a chicken, and call them. Anything. Tomorrow was going to be proactive. Good. But now, I don’t think I’ll have the energy. My alarm is set to go off in three and a half hours. Ugh. Gross. I suppose I should technically go lie in bed for a little while longer, but sitting here in my swivel chair, composing prose in my head, I feel like I can really be a world famous author.

The prose compositions are always thought-provoking, but they are fleeting, and as soon as I move to write them down they are gone, whisked off into the back of my brain for future reference, when I am in a similar situation two weeks from now, or when I’m secretly smelling a friend while hugging them.

I have this obsession with smells. When I was little, my favorite smell in the world was my grandma. Since her house has been adopted by my aunt, it no longer smells like Grammy, but it sparked something within me. Melanie has her voice, Dad has his ears, and Grammy… Grammy had her nose. She could smell whatever I had gotten into that day from five feet away. I always could smell her. Other things, such as my best friend’s house, freshly laundered sheets, and the rain are all associated with smells in my mind. For the life of me, however, I can never bring them back in my head, as I would the memory of a person.

People in my head are constantly changing. If I try to recall someone, say my best friend from school, her face goes through five or six angles and emotions before it is satisfied that it truly is her. Oddly enough, she, too, comes with a scent memory that is fleeting but all too memorable.

My mind is such a strange and twisted place. Women think like string, men like noodles. Even that analogy doesn’t do justice to my thoughts. Because once my thoughts have left, I always feel like part of me is missing. Like I’ve trivialized them. Like they’re scents in the wind, always there with me, but gone the second I try to pin them down to bring them closer to my core.