forget my song
2003-08-19 || 10:41 a.m.

It's very hard to sleep.

I've always fallen asleep to fantasies, to stories in my head, to dramas that continued for days, weeks, months and sometimes even years. Replayed, with bits added, refined, moved on and eventually abandoned for something newer as my waking life changed.

It started because when I was a child I had to go to bed so obscenely early. My mum just didn't like me. She couldn't bear me to be around so I had to go to bed at around 6pm. Even up to the age of 15 I had to be in bed at 8.30pm. And I wasn't allowed to do anything. Not allowed to have the light on. Not allowed to read. And I was too scared of her to disobey.

So I created an alternative reality in my head.

And I looked forward to it. I looked forward to the knowledge that, every evening, I had a good three hours of imagining ahead of me in a world where I was loved. In a world where I was special and appreciated and cared for and even indulged. And so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that my earliest fantasies were of being adopted, of finding out I was adopted, of finding my real mum, of finding an alternative mum. This was the only theme right up until I was at least 13, only by then it had grown into my dad meeting someone else and me being able to go live with him.

And then when I was 15 I found I fancied boys and so my fantasies changed. Fuck the wanting a mum, that didn't matter any more. I'd grown past that. I still wanted love, but I wanted it in a different form now. Of course, I couldn't have that in reality either. Right up until the last couple of years really I hadn't quite grasped that I will never have this. But the day in 1997 when he tried to kill me and the day in 1998 when I found out he'd been lying for years - then I realised that no-one could ever love me but I still stubbonly continued with my alternative reality where people didn't only love me, they adored me.

Up until last night that is.

Last night I lay in bed empty. I felt like a coroner had cut me open but it wasn't my body he was interested in, it was my mind. He had cut into my mind and taken every dream I ever had, examined them, dissected them and put them back any old how with instructions to sew me up because it all looks the same from the outside anyway.

And I had this sudden total understanding that I am truly not human. Its not any longer something that I just say. And my fantasies only ever have that one theme: to love and to be loved. I could never dream of winning the lottery, of moving house, of anything material at all. All I want is a love that is a total mind, soul and body fuck.

But last night I realised how awfully insulting it was to ever include anyone in my head with me. It is utter foulness of me to imagine another human touching me or kissing me and me doing the same to them. It is totally wrong of me to place anyone in my head, in my alternative reality.

And so that is why I cannot sleep.

All the other problems would fade away at night because at night I could be in someone else's arms. I could imagine that unlike reality, in my dreams someone I liked really did like me back. And I always had that stupid, ridiculous tiny bit of me that thought if I wished it hard enough, one day it would happen.

But now I know it never will.

And I'm truly thankful that the rest of you have these things. I am truly thankful that you are desired, are kissed, are loved, are cared for and just so long as you all always have them, then I will put up with not having them. I will lie awake at night without my dreams because I would never want another living soul to feel the way I do.

And one day when the gods hang my soul up I know I will see only woven foul, rank blackness and when I see the souls of beautiful pure light around me I will be thankful I was kept forever apart.