Present and Tomorrow

I find the future scary. It’s like I’ve always been struggling to fully catch the present moment. And when the future comes in, I’m just annoyed at it because I have to start again. Because when the future becomes the present moment, I have to catch it again.

This was why I had a phase of insomnia. I dreaded the next day coming because I was just starting to live the present day. And I hated that I couldn’t live it right away in the morning because everything just takes so much effort out of me. When morning comes, I lay on my bed and all the worst thoughts come in. Enter noon, and I’m still on my bed. By afternoon I would have slapped myself back to my senses. I’d take a bath at 7 pm. I’d have finished thinking all of the bad thoughts in my head and finally get that feeling of hopefulness, that feeling of doing things better and becoming emotionally better. And I start doing productive things that I should have done at morning. But because I didn’t, I run out of time and when 10 pm comes I think to myself, “Ah, a healthy person would go to bed early.” But a healthy person would have done something productive for the day too. And I haven’t.

And I feel conflicted. Should I do something productive or should I sleep? Both are things a healthy person would do, a person who has their life together, a person who isn’t plagued by thoughts spiraling out of control, repeating themselves over and over and over and over again.

And then I get that sick feeling in the stomach, the one that makes you want to vomit your dinner. My nerves go taut, my arms feel cold, my hands are sweaty, my heart rate is fast, and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I CAN’T BREATHE—

What do I do? I do nothing.

To contain the growing unease all over my body, I just do anything that feels fun. I play and spend hours wasting time away on a video game. I’m not being productive. And I’m not sleeping early. But I’m trying so hard not to panic, not to scream, not to cry uncontrollably, not to repeat the same thoughts over and over and over again—¬ not realizing the next day will start the same.

Because I wasn’t being productive. I wasn’t sleeping early.

And with every passing day, the importance of these two things grow bigger and bigger and bigger until they become scary unreachable goals and not normal human activities. And I get terrified and overwhelmed of their importance. And I do nothing.