Friday, May 23, 2014

Hidemi’s Rambling No.516

A couple of nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night when I heard a loud thud. I thought something had fallen from the shelves, but the minute I dozed off, a thud woke me up again. This time, it sounded like my inner noise coming from my head. I opened my eyes and saw my room spinning vertically like a fun house at a fair. At first I thought it was a strong earthquake. I covered myself with my futon and waited it to stop. Then I noticed there was no noise of anything that should fall or be broken though the earthquake was strong enough to make my room upside down over and over. Besides, while my room was rolling, I hadn’t fallen from the bed. The room was in dead silence and I lay still. I realized it wasn’t an earthquake and removed the futon from my face. The room was still spinning around me violently and finally I understood I was having massive vertigo. Since I had hardly ever had vertigo in my life, fear engulfed me. I wondered if I was dying now and this was how it felt right before people died. I asked myself if I had bumped my head on something earlier or eaten something bad, but I had no idea. Long, terrifying minutes later, the spin stopped. I felt queasy and went to the bathroom to feel better. And then, the bathroom started spinning madly. I held on to the wall desperately not to roll around. When it stopped, fierce nausea hit me. I got back to my bed to lie down, and the incredible amount of sweat began to pour out of me. I had never sweated so much before. It was as if every pore on my skin had spewed sweat all at once with all their force. I saw my sweat dribble down onto the floor and was fully convinced that I was dying. The first thing that came to my mind was my new song I have been working on. I regretted not having finished it and thought I should have worked for it much faster. It was near completion but never saw the light. I even thought of booting up my computer and setting the song up so that my partner could play it back as it was completed so far. Instead, it occurred to me to leave a last note to him. I rummaged out a piece of paper and wrote down how and what time I died. I also tried to leave some messages for him, but nothing came out but fear. I just scribbled casual words and a weird doodle and went back to bed. Feeling extremely scared, I alternated between dozing off and waking up by vertigo until morning. I didn’t die. Dizziness subsided and I was alive. About a week ago, my partner told me that I might die soon because of my continuous lack of sleep. I’ve exercised at the gym in the morning everyday for over one year and regularly had to shorten my sleep for that. I believed that one-year exercising had made me physically strong and healthy, and that some lack of sleep wouldn’t do me any harm. I was wrong. I think my lack of sleep contributed that scary near-death experience. Or, I was simply under hypnosis of my partner’s reproach…