Insomnia has always tended to get the best of me. Even at times where drowsiness seemed overwhelming and my eyes felt like they’d been pepper-sprayed, I still couldn’t manage to rest. The nights bear the cruelest darkness for me, and though the hour I lay my head down is reasonable, my mind does not listen. It wanders into random thoughts, images, and sometimes memories that desperately needed to be sealed away in the dormant parts of my brain. Of course, tonight’s significance only makes it harder for the melatonin to attempt to work on putting me asleep. So here I am on another sleepless night in this empty apartment, making pictures out of the cracks in my ceiling, wishing my eyes would close and have a dreamless night.
While my finger was dancing and creating trees and Einstein’s mustache in the air, my silk curtains catch a light breeze and land on my side as if they’re attempting to combine and create a substitute blanket for me. I smile slightly. I knew what was about to happen. The city doesn’t exactly provide a tropical atmosphere, but then again, she can be gracious enough to bless us with sweet flowing air to enhance the sparkle of the skyline. That wasn’t the case tonight. As the curtains continued to flow graciously in the air, I noticed a sort of dim, natural light that glowed from the top of the window sill down to that empty spot in my bed, the spot I dare not sleep on. A cool, sparkly golden mist takes over for the breeze and rests gently on the pillow I do not touch. It was already time…
As my clock struck the midnight hour, the mist began to seep in through every crack that light had been been shinning through, and that mist, that has been continuing to visit me once a year for the past seven, began to take the form of a young man in a tuxedo, his black hair slicked back evenly with care, his green eyes twinkling as they stared at me. A deep baritone voice whispers, “Hello my darling” to me. I smile, and my eyes begin to water from the tear ducts I’d overused and thought were dry. “Hello,” I whispered back to the shadow, which began to make his way to the bed to lay next to me, the way he always had before, and brushed my cheek gently with his small, tender hand.
“Let it go already,” he said to me. “It’s been far too long my dear. The guilt needs to subside, though there really shouldn’t be guilt to begin with.” I closed my eyes and sobbed slightly, knowing that no matter what anyone told me, including this soul who was comforting me, it was my fault. “I pressured you,” I said to him. “I rushed you. If I’d committed myself to the fact that I was sublimely happy the way we were and not forced you-”
The specter put his index finger to my lips, hushing me and my outburst of frustration, and wiped the tears that flowed as if he’d mastered the skill. “You cannot blame yourself for an accident you did not cause,” he said to me warmly. “You need not even forgive yourself because you were not wrong for wanting to spend all of our lifetimes together.”
I opened my eyes to see this man that I loved with every fiber of my being smiling at me like he used to when he lived, comforting me the way he used to when I was upset, clearing the pools of tears I cried all over again because he had so many years to practice. “What I wouldn’t give to have you back,” I said, holding his hand close to my heart and to the ring I kept chained around my neck, the ring he worked overtime to slip on the finger that shows the most significance.
“There is something you can do to make me happy love,” he smiled. And what wouldn’t I do? I’d gladly give up my will to live if he could live the rest of his life knowing I loved him that much. “I want you to sleep, my dear,” he began to stroke my hair. “I want you to sleep and make up for all the rest you’ve missed all this time. I want you to sleep and dream of me as I was, and dream of who I would have become if I still existed. Sleep for me.”
My eyes had already reached their breaking point, and the bags underneath them could swallow me whole, but he was right. I did need to lay in comfort, clear all my thoughts, and submerge myself into darkness so I could finally become a well-rested individual, even if it were only for one night.
“Stay with me,” I said to him. “I can’t sleep without you here.”
He moved closer and wrapped his arms around me, the way he did before bed every night, and kissed my forehead gently. “I’ll stay with you,” he said to me. “Always…”
The tears were finally beginning to dissipate, as I closed my eyes and whispered, “I love you” one last time before I was taken into that area right in between being asleep and being awake. His warmth was soothing me further and further into my slumber as the golden light began to dim and fade away until I was left with the feeling of being in his arms, the smell of his cologne against my bedspread, and the one night out of the year when I can lay my head down and obtain a good night’s sleep.