Butoh

Ofcourse there are a million people worse of than me first of all

So get all of them out of your mind and focus on me ♌️

But yeah i have a severe sleeping disorder (just found out that 10-30 percent of the population has chronic insomnia, but most of them are much older as in elderly people so I don’t talk to others a lot who suffer from it). And I’ve had it all my life. As a newborn I had trouble sleeping, just all my life. I was 16 when I didn’t sleep for a week, just dozed off for an hour or two, so eventually I hallucinated, and felt like I was floating and everything moved past me as in a tunnel and I heard mumbling voices, all the while being so desperate for the oblivious state of sleep. Because being so awake, it starts to hurt your senses, the light, and especially the harshness of the people that sense that you are somewhere between there and not there. I am not in the shop to buy bread, I am drifting away. And for some reason all you want then is for everything to be comfortabele and quiet, but the opposite is happening. And every condescending glaze or remark gets deep into your core, because a gateway is open. You become vulnerable. So you hide away as much as possible.

For months, maybe a year, I basically don’t sleep until 5/6 in the morning and it’s also slowly getting later so that sometimes it’s 7 or even 11 when it’s really bad.

And this ofcourse completely influences my life. I am awake at night, but sometimes too tired to go out of bed to even take a sleeping pill, let alone do something productive. I want to sleep at night. But because I don’t I sleep from early morning to 12/13, or 15/16 when I just give in sometimes,

my whole rhythm is reversed. If you think going to bed earlier is the answer, I lie awake until morning. Even when I take a sleeping pill. When the sleeping pill does work I am so fast asleep I don’t hear my alarm, and it takes hours to come out of a daze.

I still am quite productive in the afternoon, evening or night, but I am always either lying down worrying, passed out during the day or running to an appointment which I often have to cancel or that I forget because I’m not very alert or clearheaded.

So I don’t know, sometimes it feels like I am a prisoner of my disorders, my sleeping disorder in this case. I’m not really present, I can’t build something up. It’s just running after the facts often. I mean when I get in a workflow I start so late that I don’t wanna stop and I don’t eat on a regular time and so the whole rhythm of mundane things is all shifting and hurried. Then ofcourse there’s the days that the energy is just gone and I have to recover so nothing gets done, I just sleep or watch Netflix. But those days are often needed and don’t take up too much of my time.

I’m sure that people who have to work 6 or even 7 days a week and make long hours feel the same, but it’s a weird thing when you do have more time (I do have many things to do during the week, it’s not like I have all time to myself) but you never get to really experience life, no time or energy to see summer turn into fall like now. It’s just sometimes a very tired and hurried glance at the trees, smelling the air, sensing the cold, remembering past experiences, but it’s always like “not now not now”, cause I don’t have that state of mind.

So it’s almost 6 now. Sometimes when you give into the early morning without having had sleep it can turn into something nice….. but it’s so disruptive nonetheless. Cause you do have to catch up with the missed hours, and eventually I become weird and tired.

So when I lie in bed at night often my body and mind can’t calm down. I feel everything and I always think that people wouldn’t understand when I tell this but it’s like the soft comfortable blanket is burning my skin, while at the same time they remain a soft harmless blanket. It’s like everything stings into me like needles, or it’s pulling at me or pushing me away, and it drives me insane. And it really hurts, not because the bed itself is actually painful but my nervous system is so sensitive and honestly just so traumatized still and so raging with anxiety or anger or sadness or loneliness that all touch hurts me. And it’s impossible to sleep like that. I barely cry, ever. But I’m on the verge of tears often especially when I have an appointment the next day that I don’t wanna miss but the hours just speed up until it’s 3 then 4 then 5, 6 in the morning. And often I would like to get somewhere rested, looking my best. But that’s out of the question, and frankly I sometimes I don’t have the energy or i can’t find the time to take a shower. It’s too daunting, and the mornings are for rushing.

Well on top of that I’ve been through a lot. Some important people in my life have either ignored my needs or actively terrorized me and gave their all to break my spirit. They did not succeed, but at times I do feel like I’m in this cage and the outside world is passing me by. I don’t connect, I just move in it sometimes, like a fox perhaps, both self aware and very vigilant. Always looking out for danger, perhaps still masking now I think of it. Masking weakness, masking anxiety, shyness, paranoia, despair, confusion. With aggression or with manic extroversion, or with a hand held out to help you so you’ll appreciate me.

So recently I found out that it’s even harder than I thought to adopt children as a gay man. I always knew I had to have a steady income, a healthy financial situation, and a stable and healthy psychological situation as well, both things which are more and more realistic in a future, when things keep going so well. And ofcourse I would need a partner, because with my bipolar and cptsd I need someone to back up when I get bed ridden, which happens every so often for a few days. I always thought about how they would have to deal with that, like I’d have to tell them “I don’t feel so well today, I’ll be alright very soon”.

But as I was saying I found out it’s harder than I thought. First I heard that most countries won’t let you adopt when you’re gay because they’re just against the idea of homosexuals as parents. And I knew it would cost a lot of money too but then I heard that the maximum age to adopt a child is 41. Well I just kinda gave up on that dream when I heard that because my life would have miraculously changed in only 10 years. Still possible but less likely.

So whatever the reader is thinking right now, I want you to see what the actual point is. Imagine a straight person, male or female, realizing they are infertile at the age of 30. Wouldn’t that be devastating to anyone who had a wish to become a parent? And wouldn’t it be at least difficult for most people who have a faint idea of ever having a child?

I just realized myself that there was no place for those feelings because I’m a gay man. But I now see that my life-force was a little more diminished, and my connection to other people changed in the way that I am much more careless if I lose someone. I feel much more independent but beneath it there’s also a nonchalance. And suddenly this morning I saw the connection between caring less about these relationships and the inability to start a family for myself which still is my dream, somewhere a little deeper down.

The bridge to the future is just less interesting now.

It’s like I got excluded from this dance of social experiences and these life stages that are so natural for every living being.

There are many reasons why people can’t have children when they want to, but I do think we are blind to the emotional aspect of homosexual people that can’t have children if they want to. I didn’t even realize it myself, even though I still remember that there was this emptiness that hit me when I heard about the rule I mentioned. A hardening within me.