Sleep Walking

Dear older self, as I write this I’m already trying to work out how to impress you. Or at least, you know, avoid embarrassment. Straight away I want to try to apologise for myself, hide embarrassing stains underneath the rug like a paranoid mother before a visit from Gran. But then, I suppose it’s impossible to legislate for the future, and I suppose I should stop worrying or I’ll never get anything done. So I’ll just say hello. And, obviously, I hope you’re okay.

Dear older self, I think I think too much and I realise that that’s ironic. It reminds me of what that girl said to me at the party. She came over to me smiling and held my temples like she was going to read my mind. She said, “Honey… don’t think too much” and smiled wider but with pity in her eyes. Then she danced away into another room. It was as if she didn’t have to work at being comfortable with herself like the rest of us do. As if self-assurance just uncoiled from somewhere in her tummy and warmed her head quiet. Actually, a lot of people seem like that. Anyway another thing that bothers me is you can’t stop thinking too much. Never just like that, anyway, and surely not in the same way that you can stop eating too many iced buns. Minds don’t go blank… Do they? Perhaps one day they’ll invent some kind of neurological slim-fast to help you deal with all the unnecessary mind-fat. That would be nice. I don’t think I’d eat it, though. I want an iced bun.

Dear older self, I realise that it’s a faux pas to talk directly about ideas in writing. You’re supposed to show them. You have to hint and imply them by describing events that happen in reality. If I said to you that I feel sad, that’s insufficient. I’ve got to talk what happened that made me sad, how the sadness is expressed. I’m supposed to couch it in metaphor and tell you all about my deep oceans of alienation and all the rest of it. But I think that metaphor can cloud the world as much as illuminate it. And, you know, I really want to talk directly about ideas. I want to talk about immortality and euthanasia. I want to talk about our tendency to be too anthropomorphic and at the same time subscribe to an entrenched misanthropy, and how it’s silly to hate humans in the abstract because we had no hand in our own creation and we only do what comes naturally to us. I want to talk about how god doesn’t exist. I want to talk about how we all used to be babies and how we have to squeeze each drop of our maturity from experiences, and how these experiences are usually things going wrong. But the trouble with talking directly about your ideas is, people don’t really care very much about each other’s ideas. Most of the time that is. My mum says I have to experience life before my ideas can have validity. My stepdad says if I don’t get my head out of the clouds he’ll drag it out for me. I think he says that because he has had a tough life, and because he is drunk quite often. He’s always asking me when I’ll move out, and why don’t I give him and my mum some fucking space and if I think my thoughts will pay the bills. But this is a letter to myself, and I don’t feel too bad about breaking the rules. By the way, I hope you are still breaking the rules.

Dear older self, Becca sat next to me in maths today. I did the work; of course, I always do the work, but about 98% of my mind was locked tight on the feeling of the smooth, cool skin of her arm brushing against mine. It made me feel a bit light-headed and I don’t quite know why because I’d never thought of her like that, in fact I’d never really thought about her at all before today, but I liked the feeling I must admit. So anyway I went looking for her at lunch and tried to say hi, but she just looked away, as if she was really embarrassed.

Dear older self, maybe we’re all just trying to escape, and leap up out of this grey-faced, messy, baffling planet to some place where strife is foreign, like a chocolate factory.

Dear older self, I sleep walk most nights. I wonder if you still do when you read this. Perhaps you’ll have outgrown it. Probably you will.

Dear older self, my stepfather hit me today. Wake the fuck up, you fucking self–absorbed little CUNT, he said. Wake up, wake up. It was dark outside, and I was about to start writing another letter to you and I heard him pace into the room breathing like a rhinoceros in labour or something, and I thought that was pretty funny so I started laughing. I hear the footsteps stop but the breathing carries on, right, and I just keep laughing, I’m pretty much cracking up, and I hear the breathing stop but I’m still tickled pink by my rhino image and there’s tears rolling down my face where I’m laughing so much, and then he hits me really hard on the side of my head and lifts me off the chair onto the floor, and I sort of still want to laugh, but I feel a bit sick, and so I get up and hobble towards the kitchen to get some water and Becca is in my mind for some reason, wake up Daniel, wake up, wake the fuck up you self absorbed little CUNT, and I just keep walking and then I’m back on the floor and I can’t really move much and there’s blood all over my pyjamas and I think I can hear my mum crying.

Dear older self, I actually don’t much mind hospitals. They’re nice there, and you can just let your mind float out into space a bit.

Dear older self, even though my mum and the doctors say I shouldn’t feel responsible, I think he was sort of right about waking up, and so I’m going to stop writing letters to a hypothetical me that doesn’t even exist yet. (No offence) Living in the clouds is only fun if the ground you stand on is steady. My aunt Julie read that last sentence half an hour ago, and she says I should try writing poems, but I think that she missed the point a bit. I’ve stopped sleep-walking, but my chocolate factory dreams swim through my head at night, more vividly than ever. I haven’t told anyone.