A scream of consciousness: To Sleep perchance to dream by Kim Zanes 19th May 2017
To
wake, to sleep, to wake, to sleep. Scratched by a cat, chased by a pack
of wolves. The victim of a car accident, saved by a fire breathing
dragon.
Living
in London takes a lot of conversation and a lot of concentration. It
takes a lot out of you to be safe and to feel safe; you have to always
be on your guard, never quiet trusting everyone.
I
was there but it is your memory. Not mine. It is your description.
Now you have told me, it has affected me and become mine and seeped into
my dreams. It has entered my memory via you. I don’t own it
first-hand it is second-hand and yet it was my near-death experience.
You
say I sat in a cubicle in the ER of the Whittington Hospital with a
tissue in my hand, drool pouring out of my mouth and I didn’t wipe it
away. How could a nurse know there would be a problem with that? Only
a best friend would know I could wipe a facial fluid with a tissue
under water, asleep, drunk beyond movement, tied up in the bondage of
lunacy - but not when dying. Finally, at the end, I would let go of such
a habit. You say you froze to the spot watching, watching your best
friend die, yet the nurse’s actions reassured you that you were wrong,
she was calm as she meticulously kept replacing the ejected needle from
my hand. But, as my eyes rolled up into my head and she finally saw and
requested the doctors urgently and ushered you out of the room quickly,
so that they may bring me back to life - you knew what you had watched
was my slipping step off this world.
For
the rest of lives we shall have connections that are so silent and yet
such emotionally loud screams. You now hold my death wish memory.
I
want it to be mine. I want to remember it and I don’t. It is so
important to so much that I hold dear as my religion, the religion of
the self, my self and I don’t have an ounce of it that belongs to
me first, nothing I can touch and use to strengthen my resolve, to use
to make me stronger when I am feeling weak, to recall at poignant
moments or to regale dinner party companions with.
All
I have is a second-hand view that has been distorted in my mind, making
me objectively look like Homer Simpson drooling for food.
I
feel as if even my own death memory has been stolen from me. A
description from someone else of something that happened to me. Just
like the day my father left me at the age of 4 or was it 5? Vivid
descriptions from my whole family made that memory for me.
It
isn’t fair. I am a believer and yet it never shows its face to me.
I’ve not seen a ghost, I’ve not astral planed, I’ve not touched my own
soul.
Am I a fake? Do I not take life as deeply as I think I do? Maybe if you don’t believe you are shown in order to help you, and if you do believe then the spirit world decides you don’t need to see and feel it.
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