jem on jém

[ENTRY 011]

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For once, it’s hard to write. Hard to write about a week where I can recall a short grocery list of moments worth writing about, with more than enough time to write it all. A minor tribulation or small victory here and there, something I watched, read or listened to.

Surely?

I’ve been a wet sponge lately, more absorbent as life continues to flow into me, less yellow like a racist caricature, but also porous, as information spills out of my bullet holes as fast as it soaks in… as memories are born, live, and die. Images fleeting into just frames of moments, like a subtle cinematic flashback from a film I think does subtle flashbacks really well. I retain little outside of what’s visually affecting in the moment, but occasionally some words stick out to me. In the way they’re delivered or performed or even written, there might be something of value I’ll pick up on. Perhaps to be used for later and put on a shelf of short-term memory to gather dust, or just thrown out altogether.

I should put a stop to making subtle to not-so-subtle jabs at my mind and how it operates, much less the frequency with which I create “I Should/I Wish” statements… and the number of times I mention reducing said “I Should/I Wish” statements. God. Life feels relentless, or at least the way I’ve conditioned myself to live it. A dead horse eating itself like a snake, or the other way around or wherever I was going with that.

Segue: I shared my bed with a couple of my closest friends to watch a bunch of Alien movies (two of which were pretty great and the other undoubtedly a movie).

Usually, this would’ve occurred in my roommate’s room, as is the de facto base of operations for the party stragglers of our monthly D&D sessions that usher in. A movie marathon seemed the most apt course of action after hours of make-believe while the night was still young. I didn’t want to be the tired buzz kill, wanting the night to decompress alone. Not when the mythical, regularly-scheduled friend group hangout had crawled within an inch of its life out of the Discord crypt of planning stages. And for what ended up being a short-lived, tired and hungry stupor, I floated the idea of using my room to accommodate the grand screening.

I really fucking love my bed. It is the one guaranteed respite I can have from the world. I am oddly reminded of the small glimpse of Vader’s meditation chamber seen in Empire: not so much a sterile and white, windowless enclosure, but a fortress within a fortress, in a sense. I can give my entire body and being to something in exchange for total safety and comfort. I can close my eyes with all the free real estate in the world to stretch my limbs and rest within seemingly endless confines.

I’ve formed excruciatingly rigid conditions that must be met to gain access to this personal haven. I keep it so incredibly clean inside and out, and won’t enter beneath the covers until I can meet an equivalent level of cleanliness. Maybe it’s counterintuitive to implement a barrier of entry for where I go to do something as simple as fucking sleep every night. I’d be lying if I said I never once failed to uphold bed time protocols on a night when I’m beyond exhausted or can’t be fucked. But I give this cryo pod the respect and care I feel it deserves for sheltering a weary traveller like myself time and again, and I don’t want anyone else here, please.

The bottom line is (or rather was): this place is just for me. It’s how I like it. It’s my Sanctum Sanctorum, my X-Mansion, Baxter Building, Bat-Cave, lair housed within a volcano, whatever.

But in the brief twelve-second walk upstairs where I pondered offering my room, the consensus formed in my mind didn’t stem from a “Fuck it,” but rather, a “Why not?” So we stacked a fuckload of my roommate’s blankets and pillows together and suddenly atop my haven an improvised barracks of comfort was assembled. I could say staying up until past 3 am watching movies in this state reads like a hazy miracle, but it wasn’t a blur at all. What I do remember quite fondly was how little mental effort was required to be intimately sandwiched between such dear individuals, and the act of asking to be placed right in the middle of said sandwich was a request born out of nothing but sincerity, without a second thought of how it would sound to them. Just an honest to god appeal to be nothing but closer to the realest friends I’ve known for the better part of a decade.

Somehow, the softest and neatly cultivated refuge of which I had sole reign became a foundation for a space I could share with others. There were people in my house, in my room, in the most sacred spot I could imagine for myself, and they respected it like it was nothing. Respected my presence like it was nothing. I have many a furled and moderately complicated feeling about being physically touched, but in this one particular instance, it wasn’t something to think about. I was taken in and afforded an unspoken kindness and level of intimacy that seems like nothing when I write about it, because how could this possibly be an experience worth typing about?

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