I need a sad boy montage.
Kyran
Lying awake is nothing new for me.
On a good night, I’m out in thirty minutes, welcoming the nightmares with a level of apathy that might make the darkness tremble. On a bad night, I’m here for hours—staring at the ceiling, feeling my heart race as anxiety builds, battling the sensation of rest even though I amexhausted. On those bad nights, my brain just refuses to turn off.
Sleep hates me.
Which is…fine. Normally. Even if I only get roughly four broken hours within a twenty-four-hour period, my lifestyle allows me to plan my own hours and work around streams or content production, so I’m not overly irritable or losing my mind. I can commit two-hour slices of time to napping. I can stay in bed—tossing and turning—through breakfast. I can manage.
The worst part is the anxiety, probably. The nightmares. The genuinefearof sleep even while my body screams for it.
My best sleep usually happens between sunrise and noon. Something about knowing that the sun is up keeps the shadows from creeping into my brain quite as violently. It’s like hiding under a blanket to protect me from monsters, even though the biggest monsters I’ve dealt with weren’t swayed by blankets.
Sometimes stories help me fall asleep.
I’ll dream up new ideas for projects and videos, new lore, new merch drops.
Sometimes work-related stories do more harm than good, though, either reminding me of a time when my worth entirely relied on my work or sending me trudging next door to my gaming room to start on the plans instead of drifting off.
Lately, I’ve gotten into the habit of imagining stories with Morana in them.
They’re not…always…romantic.
Sometimes she’s a shopkeep in a medieval village, selling her wares to the peasants that come by. They have riveting tales to tell, but she doesn’t really care about any of them, rolling her eyes before asking if they’re gonna buy something or not.
I like when she’s an herbalist, going on adventures in magical forests.
Or when she’s a mermaid, exploring the ocean floor for forgotten treasure.
SometimesI will stop by her shop…and we’ll fall madly in love. Or, other times, a beast will attack her in the woods, I’ll swoop in to save her…and we’ll fall madly in love. But, only occasionally, do I almost drown while she’s a mermaid.
And she saves meLittle Mermaidstyle.
Before falling madly in love with me.
Okay, fine. They’re always romantic.
My depraved, tired brain weaves petty soliloquies of love in the thinning, stretching, endless hours of the night. When I’m very, very lucky, such elaborate fantasies develop into peaceful dreams that block out the horrors that so love to play on repeat.
I’m not often lucky.
But I am often stubbornly hopeful.
Last week, I had a dream where Morana and I lived in this odd, sand-bathed landscape. Buildings dotted the red desert, jutting up like gray bones in the wasteland. The dystopian undercurrent never quite escaped me, but unlike most nightswhere that unease would take over and plunge my mind into terrors, that night all I cared about was seeing Morana.
I found her, perched at her window in one of those odd bone-like homes, so I scaled the building to reach her before I scooped her up in my arms. We stole away into the moonlit dunes, racing clouds hand-in-hand, until there were only stars and her.
My dreams have always been vivid, plaguing, consuming. I have never before been grateful for them. It’s hard to be grateful when you wake from wandering in a haunted manor made of flesh to find out that the distinct sensation of walking on sinew and muscle lingers beneath your bare feet. But the more dreams Morana infiltrates, the more I’m considering gratitude for their depth of reality.
Her weight in my arms and the warmth of her palm in my hand linger, even now.
When I close my eyes, I can almost go back to that fantasy world my brain concocted for us.
I try to.
I spend hours trying to.
