Insomnia
Insomnia // Myungsoo x Sungyeol
angst (??) // pg
Everything was perfect until Myungsoo left. Then everything went wrong. Sungyeol could only spend nights waiting for his love to return and things to go back to normal. If they would ever go back to normal that is.
Back up against the cherry-wood headboard, lower back straining from sitting in such a position wondering if only a minute has passed or if it’s been more, I can’t seem to discern the light shadows from my own figments of imagination.
A glass of lukewarm milk sits on the upturned laundry basket I call an end table; it will curdle before I touch it, will curdle before I fall asleep again probably.
He took the ugly throwback psychedelic curtains when he left so I can see the moon high in the sky, its blinding white piercing through the matte of the clouds. I assume it to be three hours past the turn of the night. I cannot be sure. I unplugged the clock some time back when I found the red numbers didn’t change as fast as they should. My phone has been dead for approximately thirty-seven hours.
I can hear the muted sounds of life outside my room. Sirens wail like babes looking for attention after a fitful night. The harsh bass of a hip hop song is traveling down from the ceiling. It’s quite annoying but I know the kids who live in that apartment mean well. The music is really not that loud, I probably only hear it because my head is overtaken by that overdramatic state of mind typical of sleep deprivation.
The cold from his side of the bed is seeping over to mine and I don’t think piling blankets over my lap will warm me. He took the fire of our love and the fire of my heart with him when he left. Now I sit up, waiting in the middle of the night to see if the fire will return but I know that it won’t. I’ve let candles, bought when I first noticed the growing cold weeks after he left, burn to the bottom of the wick. The room has smelled of lavender and cherry blossoms and brand new awakenings and yet I do not feel the warmth. I wonder if I can survive this for much longer.
He was my lifeline, the adhesive that kept me a part of a society that was running away from me. Now that he’s left me as well, and the binding that used to keep me intact is starting the peel away from my skin, leaving only layers of unanswered questions and a lost set of organs that are beginning to forget how to function, I cannot find it in myself to chase after trends and shadowed faces that will not slow down. I just don’t have the stamina for that anymore.
I cannot do much but sit here and wait for his return. Wait for when he’ll come back through the front door with his charming smile and his upside-down personality, with his guitar strapped on his back and a song pouring from every facet of his being. I’ll wait forever for that. I’ll wait forever for the psychedelic curtains to be strung back across the rod bare above my window. I’ll wait forever for late nights spent finding each other’s limbs just to meld them as one in a seamless, rhythmic dance. I’ll wait forever to hear the words I love you again.
I’ll wait for forever even if it means I have to go through three lives.
Hopefully, I can meet him in another time. Perhaps it’ll be better then. Maybe in the far future we can love each other with only our eyes, a relationship so strong that love can’t even be used to describe it. So strong that another word will need to be invented. Or there can just not be a word for it. We can have a love so intense and out of this world there is absolutely nothing to describe it. Maybe when the planet has been wiped of humans we can come back as animals, wild and without restraint. We can nip at each other with sharp canines and paw at each other like jungle beasts at their prime and love each other raw and animalistic.
I wonder if I make any sense. He used to tell me that I had this strange way with words. That I could charm an entire city without making any sense at all and just with a smile. That was years ago. When adolescence was mixing in with responsibility and everything was a mess, just awkward kisses behind the school when we thought no one could see and typical dates to the movies on Friday evening. He told me my smile was what drew him in. He talked to me then. Before he left, we stopped communicating, stopped touching, stopped dating, stopped loving. Or, at least, he stopped loving. I think. I really don’t know. All I know is one day we were sitting together on the lopsided bench in the park down the street, laughing and kissing and loving and exchanging promises of still being one even when our hair starts to turn grey and the next he was taking down curtains and pulling apart our connection from the inside out, ripping it like paper.
My stomach grumbles and it aches a dull pain in my side. I don’t know how long it has been since I have eaten. I think I ate something when I got up to get the milk but I am unsure. I don’t remember my actions. The hours blend together. The days, the weeks are all a continuous stream. Time is a confusing concept to me. My clocks are obviously broken, the earth obviously rotating at a slower pace and prolonging the day.
Back up against the cherry-wood headboard, lower back straining from sitting in such a position wondering if only a minute has passed or if it’s been more, I can’t seem to discern the light shadows from my own figments of imagination.
(
Myungsoo runs his fingers along the scratchy fabric of the obnoxious curtains they used to have hanging up in their bedroom, the pads of his fingertips screaming at the rough texture that abuses them. He sighs. He doesn’t know why he left. Perhaps it was because he was starting to feel insecure. They had been talking of their future together and it got him thinking. What if he didn’t stay, what if he found someone else next week that he loved more than Myungsoo, what if, what if, what if. What ifs are a deadly thing. What if Myungsoo didn’t leave and take with him the curtains and the fire and the hope and the time? What if Myungsoo trusted him, trusted their love? Would they still be together now, curled up on the couch and laughing at each other’s stupid comments about the sickly sweet melodrama on television?
His parents are sitting in the kitchen, whispering about something or another. He can’t be bothered with finding out. Not when his mind can’t stop thinking about the phone call earlier, the trip to the hospital this morning, the sight of his (their) friends sobbing ugly and broken. Not when his mind just can’t stop thinking about that phone call.
“M-Myungsoo. Myungsoo, oh dear, I -“
Myungsoo sits his guitar to the side and straightens his back in his seat at the sound of the woman on the line just so weak and distraught.
“Mom? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
She isn’t his own mother and he hasn’t talked to him in so long but he can’t help but address her as such.
“No. It’s … It’s Sungyeol.” She says.
“Sungyeol? What’s wrong with Sungyeol?”
“H-He might be leaving us. I thought he was fine but … My baby - “
Myungsoo isn’t quite sure he understands but his heart starts to race in panic at the distress in Sungyeol’s mother’s voice. He doesn’t know what to think when his father takes over the phone, his mother unable to relay the message.
“Myungsoo?” Sungyeol’s father doesn’t sound any better than his mother.
“Yeah?” He whispers, afraid to speak any louder to such hurt people. Afraid of what he’ll hear next about the man he loves and the man he left.
“He fell from the weak section of the railing on the balcony of your apartment.”
Their apartment was on the fourth floor. The building was old, just about falling apart, and Myungsoo had meant to get that fixed but he forgot and then he left. Sungyeol’s father said Sungyeol hadn’t been getting much sleep lately. Insomnia. And that the doctors think the sleep deprivation was starting to cause delusions and hallucinations and he must have seen something (or someone) on the balcony and went towards him. He said he was being watched over carefully but they weren’t sure if he was going to pull through. Unconscious. Major spinal injuries. Bleeding like he was shot at point-blank range. If he does make it through he’ll probably be paralyzed for life, he said. Unable to do much for himself. They were checking for brain injury so add possibility of psychological dysfunction to the list. They were running tests but everything was uncertain, everyone was unsure, proper information and diagnosis at the time was unable to be verified without the tests. Just everything was unknown
unknown
unknown.
And it was the unknowns that Myungsoo feared, the unknowns that drove him away from Sungyeol in the first place. And now all he can think of is what if he did that or what if he did this or what if Sungyeol never wakes up or what if Sungyeol dies or what if he never doubted what they felt for each other, never doubted the future. What if, what if, what if …
What if Myungsoo doesn’t think he can handle it?
)
angst (??) // pg
Everything was perfect until Myungsoo left. Then everything went wrong. Sungyeol could only spend nights waiting for his love to return and things to go back to normal. If they would ever go back to normal that is.
Back up against the cherry-wood headboard, lower back straining from sitting in such a position wondering if only a minute has passed or if it’s been more, I can’t seem to discern the light shadows from my own figments of imagination.
A glass of lukewarm milk sits on the upturned laundry basket I call an end table; it will curdle before I touch it, will curdle before I fall asleep again probably.
He took the ugly throwback psychedelic curtains when he left so I can see the moon high in the sky, its blinding white piercing through the matte of the clouds. I assume it to be three hours past the turn of the night. I cannot be sure. I unplugged the clock some time back when I found the red numbers didn’t change as fast as they should. My phone has been dead for approximately thirty-seven hours.
I can hear the muted sounds of life outside my room. Sirens wail like babes looking for attention after a fitful night. The harsh bass of a hip hop song is traveling down from the ceiling. It’s quite annoying but I know the kids who live in that apartment mean well. The music is really not that loud, I probably only hear it because my head is overtaken by that overdramatic state of mind typical of sleep deprivation.
The cold from his side of the bed is seeping over to mine and I don’t think piling blankets over my lap will warm me. He took the fire of our love and the fire of my heart with him when he left. Now I sit up, waiting in the middle of the night to see if the fire will return but I know that it won’t. I’ve let candles, bought when I first noticed the growing cold weeks after he left, burn to the bottom of the wick. The room has smelled of lavender and cherry blossoms and brand new awakenings and yet I do not feel the warmth. I wonder if I can survive this for much longer.
He was my lifeline, the adhesive that kept me a part of a society that was running away from me. Now that he’s left me as well, and the binding that used to keep me intact is starting the peel away from my skin, leaving only layers of unanswered questions and a lost set of organs that are beginning to forget how to function, I cannot find it in myself to chase after trends and shadowed faces that will not slow down. I just don’t have the stamina for that anymore.
I cannot do much but sit here and wait for his return. Wait for when he’ll come back through the front door with his charming smile and his upside-down personality, with his guitar strapped on his back and a song pouring from every facet of his being. I’ll wait forever for that. I’ll wait forever for the psychedelic curtains to be strung back across the rod bare above my window. I’ll wait forever for late nights spent finding each other’s limbs just to meld them as one in a seamless, rhythmic dance. I’ll wait forever to hear the words I love you again.
I’ll wait for forever even if it means I have to go through three lives.
Hopefully, I can meet him in another time. Perhaps it’ll be better then. Maybe in the far future we can love each other with only our eyes, a relationship so strong that love can’t even be used to describe it. So strong that another word will need to be invented. Or there can just not be a word for it. We can have a love so intense and out of this world there is absolutely nothing to describe it. Maybe when the planet has been wiped of humans we can come back as animals, wild and without restraint. We can nip at each other with sharp canines and paw at each other like jungle beasts at their prime and love each other raw and animalistic.
I wonder if I make any sense. He used to tell me that I had this strange way with words. That I could charm an entire city without making any sense at all and just with a smile. That was years ago. When adolescence was mixing in with responsibility and everything was a mess, just awkward kisses behind the school when we thought no one could see and typical dates to the movies on Friday evening. He told me my smile was what drew him in. He talked to me then. Before he left, we stopped communicating, stopped touching, stopped dating, stopped loving. Or, at least, he stopped loving. I think. I really don’t know. All I know is one day we were sitting together on the lopsided bench in the park down the street, laughing and kissing and loving and exchanging promises of still being one even when our hair starts to turn grey and the next he was taking down curtains and pulling apart our connection from the inside out, ripping it like paper.
My stomach grumbles and it aches a dull pain in my side. I don’t know how long it has been since I have eaten. I think I ate something when I got up to get the milk but I am unsure. I don’t remember my actions. The hours blend together. The days, the weeks are all a continuous stream. Time is a confusing concept to me. My clocks are obviously broken, the earth obviously rotating at a slower pace and prolonging the day.
Back up against the cherry-wood headboard, lower back straining from sitting in such a position wondering if only a minute has passed or if it’s been more, I can’t seem to discern the light shadows from my own figments of imagination.
(
Myungsoo runs his fingers along the scratchy fabric of the obnoxious curtains they used to have hanging up in their bedroom, the pads of his fingertips screaming at the rough texture that abuses them. He sighs. He doesn’t know why he left. Perhaps it was because he was starting to feel insecure. They had been talking of their future together and it got him thinking. What if he didn’t stay, what if he found someone else next week that he loved more than Myungsoo, what if, what if, what if. What ifs are a deadly thing. What if Myungsoo didn’t leave and take with him the curtains and the fire and the hope and the time? What if Myungsoo trusted him, trusted their love? Would they still be together now, curled up on the couch and laughing at each other’s stupid comments about the sickly sweet melodrama on television?
His parents are sitting in the kitchen, whispering about something or another. He can’t be bothered with finding out. Not when his mind can’t stop thinking about the phone call earlier, the trip to the hospital this morning, the sight of his (their) friends sobbing ugly and broken. Not when his mind just can’t stop thinking about that phone call.
“M-Myungsoo. Myungsoo, oh dear, I -“
Myungsoo sits his guitar to the side and straightens his back in his seat at the sound of the woman on the line just so weak and distraught.
“Mom? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
She isn’t his own mother and he hasn’t talked to him in so long but he can’t help but address her as such.
“No. It’s … It’s Sungyeol.” She says.
“Sungyeol? What’s wrong with Sungyeol?”
“H-He might be leaving us. I thought he was fine but … My baby - “
Myungsoo isn’t quite sure he understands but his heart starts to race in panic at the distress in Sungyeol’s mother’s voice. He doesn’t know what to think when his father takes over the phone, his mother unable to relay the message.
“Myungsoo?” Sungyeol’s father doesn’t sound any better than his mother.
“Yeah?” He whispers, afraid to speak any louder to such hurt people. Afraid of what he’ll hear next about the man he loves and the man he left.
“He fell from the weak section of the railing on the balcony of your apartment.”
Their apartment was on the fourth floor. The building was old, just about falling apart, and Myungsoo had meant to get that fixed but he forgot and then he left. Sungyeol’s father said Sungyeol hadn’t been getting much sleep lately. Insomnia. And that the doctors think the sleep deprivation was starting to cause delusions and hallucinations and he must have seen something (or someone) on the balcony and went towards him. He said he was being watched over carefully but they weren’t sure if he was going to pull through. Unconscious. Major spinal injuries. Bleeding like he was shot at point-blank range. If he does make it through he’ll probably be paralyzed for life, he said. Unable to do much for himself. They were checking for brain injury so add possibility of psychological dysfunction to the list. They were running tests but everything was uncertain, everyone was unsure, proper information and diagnosis at the time was unable to be verified without the tests. Just everything was unknown
unknown
unknown.
And it was the unknowns that Myungsoo feared, the unknowns that drove him away from Sungyeol in the first place. And now all he can think of is what if he did that or what if he did this or what if Sungyeol never wakes up or what if Sungyeol dies or what if he never doubted what they felt for each other, never doubted the future. What if, what if, what if …
What if Myungsoo doesn’t think he can handle it?
)