Cities are for The Sleepless

There’s a quiet affliction amongst some of us. It’s not insomnia, but it’s something like it. It’s this daily acceleration of a searching desire—it’s growing and growing as the sun speeds to the top of the sky, stalls through the early afternoon, and then plummets through the earth. We grow more and more hungry, more and more anxious, and more and more desperate. We are the ones who don’t let the night end. We sit on porches listening to the night’s noises, thinking about those who are asleep, and reaching out to those who are still awake. We pace paths into the concrete, we read “the internet,” and we get lost in the epic love stories of Russian literature. We are The Restless, and we’re different than you.

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I have a stupid theory about The Restless, and like many other stupid theories, it has to do with video games:

When playing a video game, there is a “difficulty” option available. This allows game-players of lesser skill the opportunity to lower the “difficulty level,” so that they may beat the game and save the world from aliens or terrorists or zombies or Nazis. This is, after all, the point of video games. We’re a generation full of world savers who are retreating to our alternate realities with each failed attempt to save the world that we live in. We dream of moments in the hospital, with the popular girl at our side, (we saved her) and we’ve exceeded all of the expectations placed upon us. Our parents are proud, the popular girl is in love, and we managed to somehow suffer injuries that do not affect our faces or testicles. We can win in video games, and it’s because the producers of video games understand us, that they gave us the option to lower the “difficulty setting.”

Anyway, The Restless are the world savers who are retreating to our alternate realities with each failed attempt to save the real world that we live in.

We welcome the brief respites from the reality of our self-perceived insignificance. And we all stay awake later than anyone around us, walking the streets in the rain so that god and man might know that we’re still giving that particular day a go of it. Our perseverance, our sleeplessness, is the badge awarded for our valiance.

It is never too late for us to go to waffle house. It is never to late for a coffee. It is never too late to chat with far-away people on facebook. It is never too late for anything because we roam the empty streets of a city knowing that we’ve taken victory over everyone who’s fallen asleep, everyone who’s conceded that “tonight,” is “just another night.”

We are the restless.

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I used to say that I haven’t fallen in love, but I know now that, that isn’t true. I’ve fallen in love quite a few times. I’ve fallen in love with romances that never happened, I’ve fallen in love with girlfriends who searched my face for myself, and I’ve fallen in love with the girls who pass only with eye-contact and a recognition of similarity. I’ve walked the streets of a city after the living are asleep and I’ve run into you. I’ve stood in the rain because I need proof that I feel it, I’ve wished that I were different for sake of the people who love me, and I’ve maintained an ever-present departure date to discourage their investment.

I almost disappeared this last year. Or maybe I did. I heard older voices discourage my voice and my being who I am, and I dedicated myself to becoming a different, more acceptable, person. I lost a friend. I drove the dead, visited the dead, and shook the hands of the parents of the dead. I watched the poor be turned away because they couldn’t be helped, and I turned away for the same reason.

I learned the bible in my head and the church in my heart and I became more convinced of my inability to become adequate. I learned Dostoyevsky in my head and Breaking Bad in my heart, and I became more convinced of my inability to become adequate. I learned the love of a woman in my head and the breaking of her heart, in my heart, and I became more convinced of my inability to become adequate.

Being loved and being involved at a church are the two best ways to affirm your disappointment with your own character.

But I’ve found community amongst The Restless. We wonder whether our movement is a trait or a phase, we drink late into the night, and find the most magnificent stimulus that earth offers—because it is those stimuli alone that draw our attention away from the confusing and alluring nature of our own interpersonal quandaries.

Tonight, I tipped the kabob vender as much as the kabob cost because I was out beyond the time of the living. Tonight, I walked blocks and blocks before I realized that I had, because I was out beyond the time of the living. Tonight, I wrote about being awake beyond the living because I was awake beyond the time that the living retreated.

Some will think that this was a typed piece by a falling person, but some will think that they aren’t alone.

I’ve been gaining confidence.

I’ve received emails and messages from The Restless, and they say that they are with me. They say that they are not “they” and myself, “I,” but that we are the same. And it is for they that I write. The happily married, the well adjusted, and the gainfully employed are fine as it is. I no longer write for my vain aspirations of success, but for the few close Restless ones who read the pieces posted late at night and say, “I am not alone in this.” And I write so that I will hear The Restless say, “You are not alone in this.”

It’s true, that tonight, eventually, I will go to sleep. My insanity will grow as weary as my body and I will lie somewhere until I dream of being the hero that I’m not. The “difficulty setting” is simply to high for some of us. For myself. We’ll play, and we’ll try, but we just wont beat the game.

But I say that we are heroes. I say that there is something to the playing of the game at a level more difficult than possible. I love the mad ones, the ones who live and die failed heroes. Keep grinding heroes. Keep falling in love with the eyes you make contact with, with the ideas that you don’t pursue, and with the necessarily fictional versions of yourselves. Walk the city streets made for the sleepless and claim victory over those who have retreated.