I need you to talk to me… ALL THE TIME

Silence worries me. In fact, to be completely honest I hate it. Even a minute of silence is unbearable to me. Since I was young, I was cursed with two things –

1. Being unimaginably chatty any hour of the day and never tiring myself out of it

2. Thinking way too much

At first glance, the two may seem totally unrelated but a certain combination of the two can wreak havoc on the likes of me. Yes, you guessed it right. Negative of #1 and a surplus of #2.

When my very chatty self is forced into silence, my mind somersaults into thinking too many things. None of them good.

One such period was when my partner decided to go completely silent on me for nine hours straight one day. I analyzed and over analyzed the dynamics of our relationship. Played the previous day’s conversation over & over in my head. Tried to read between the lines, make more sense of gestures, of words that may have remained unspoken. Cooked up half-a-dozen absurd scenarios in my head. Then one by one reasoned as to why they could not be true.

Living under the curse of technology and a gazillion different ways of corresponding with people, I looked at the last seen whatsapp timestamp a five hundred and thirty seven times. Stalked his Facebook every few minutes for any activity, checked my phone a few times to make sure the network strength was full that I may not be missing any calls. Then resolved to stop thinking about it, maybe he is just busy, maybe he just has nothing to say right now. Or Maybe he doesn’t remember me? Maybe there is nothing left to talk between us? Maybe this relationship is already over or just hanging by a thread? Maybe there is someone else? The human mind is so full of SHIT – ‘Surprisingly Hilarious Imaginative Treatise’, some of them with enough details for a three hundred page fantasy novel. I found myself falling deeper and deeper into an abyss of self-deprecating thoughts only to be suddenly startled by a loud ring. (Of course, I had kept my phone’s ringer on the loudest volume possible). I picked up the phone to be greeted by the sweetest albeit sleepy – “Good morning love”. I froze.

Nine hours back the same voice had wished me a sleepy good night and said the most sincere “I love you”, I had ever heard. I hung up. I knew this had to end. There was enough love but our worlds could never meet. This was my story every night when the rest of the world slept but I, Natasha, a chronic insomniac stayed up all night.

P.S. – This is an alternative style short piece of fiction written to bring into perspective how serious the issue of insomnia is. Insomnia is often not taken seriously by the victim or the people around them. But in most scenarios, chronic insomnia is an early indication of the onset of other major disorders including depression and schizophrenia and can ruin perfectly healthy relationships, marriages, families, careers. Please get help or assist your loved ones in getting help before it’s too late.