revised email sent to someone who tried to save me (5:00am on August 17, 2004)...
3:12 in the morning and Claudia is awake. A moth circles the only light on in the neighborhood. Claudia thought of shooing it away and saving in from burns, but she didn't have the strength to leave her chair or raise her arm or save herself. An early doctor's appointment awaits her later today. She knows that she should get some sleep, but she's too afraid to. She is completely terrified of the comfort of her bed. It's happened before. In fact, Claudia has been afraid of her warm blanket and inviting mattress for many days now. Today, however, she tells herself that she's avoiding slumber because of the appointment. This time (she wants to believe) it is a fear of being poked, pinched, and questioned by nosey nurses that is robbing her of sleep. All the other times it was the fear of time's selfish acceleration that stopped her surrender to slumber. But she wanted to believe that this time it was different.
Claudia fought sleep. She fought the dirty trick time played on her much needed happiness. She fought because it was unfair that time only accelerated when she was sleeping and finally happy. It was a daily played dirty trick that Claudia had grown to fear. Every night, Claudia would lie down, close her eyes, and then open them. That was it. Hours were to have passed between the final closing of the eyes to the first opening of them, but it was only the seconds during the closing and opening that Claudia knew of. If it wasn’t for the contrast of moonlit darkness and the morning’s light-filled sky, Claudia would not be the only person questioning why sleep only occurs in intervals of a few seconds. If it wasn’t for the changing numbers on clocks, more people would agree with Claudia that time can fly faster than anything else in existence.
During slumber, the present suddenly becomes the past and everyone is that much older. But Claudia discovered that when she resisted that delicious unconsciousness and stalked the quiet and still late night hours, time would forget its hurry.
When she avoided sleep, every beat her heart produced echoed in the dark and in her ears. The second hands on nearby clocks would never sound so loud, so steady, so reliable. If she did it just right, if she let her mind do all the living for awhile, if she let her body fade into the surrounding stillness, if Claudia did all of this just right, she could exist in a single moment for as long as she wished to. The future and the past would be erased and only a captured present would be allowed to live. When Claudia would do it just right, she didn't have to fear change because change became impossible. She just remained who she was and where she was and that was it.
But Claudia became too fond of her trick…
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It is 4:36 in the morning and Claudia is not asleep. A moth lies dead under the only light on in the neighborhood. Its host did not have the strength to rescue it from the flame. Its host would not have the strength to visit the doctor later today. Its host had lost the strength to save herself. Morning light will pierce the present darkness and numbers on clocks will change, but the moth knows that this will not be proof against time’s sudden stillness.