Every night as I sleep alone in my bed, I find myself always facing the left. According to my sleeping position, the wall comes to my right, but I’ll either be facing the ceiling or sleep on my side, facing the left. “But why?” I wondered. When I sleep facing my left, I can see my tiny room entirely, like a panorama view in a camera.
Now my bed happens to be in one corner, my room door diagonal to it. This door faces the sides of my cupboards and mirror. Thus, when I sleep facing my left, I am directly facing the intersection of the upside down ‘L’ that the cupboards and the door form together, across two walls of my room. Doors are creepy. A barrier, to stop someone from entering your space, or a pathway for someone to do exactly that. Like they’d show in movies, saving the protagonist and buying him/her/them time as the killer keeps banging on it while they look for a weapon, or creating a safe space for two lovers to have some privacy. But the paranoid pessimist that I am, I feel like doors stand for an entryway, thus, someone is supposed to enter. So once I switch off the lights, and the room is dark, I feel the need to be alert. Yes, I do lock my room door, but can I lock my flow of thoughts?
Some nights I’m clueless as to what I’m worried about. Is it about a human knocking on my door in the middle of the night, and me opening the door to check, and to never be found again, or is it something that can just walk in regardless of how many doors and locks I have? As silly as it sounds, I tend to go with the latter more often than not. Because I believe, a human, however unknown could be handled. After all, it’s the same species as me. Not saying a combat would end up with me being victorious because it’d probably end for me the way it ended for Oberyn Martell when the Mountain brutally killed him but what scares me is the possibility of the unknown. The idea that I’d not know how to combat something that I have never really faced or something that could possibly be unimaginably powerful. It makes me curious and scared simultaneously to know that this could be a possibility within these four walls that is now home to me.
It is human nature to be curious. We spend billions on rockets and satellites, to look into the vast, ever-expanding universe, where we don’t reside, but to know more, about what lies in the dark abyss that surrounds the life, that is us, and to know if whatever exists there, is an advantage or a threat. So is it wrong if I get slightly paranoid about the possibilities beyond my imagination, things I cannot fathom, that could possibly be loitering within these four walls, eyes staring at me as I sleep, waking up next day with some unexplained bruises on my feet? Thus to close ones, I tell them it’s paranoia, but where does this originate from? I call it curiosity, but apparently, it’s called overthinking too.
Have you ever noticed that when people see space, they have to fill it? As children, we had fill in the blanks as a question during exams, where we filled up empty spaces. When people move into a new house, they immediately have to furnish it since it’s a basic requirement and serves different purposes like providing a seating area, a spot to sleep, etc. But even after this, we tend to add other things. Why? Decoration. Because empty spaces aren’t appealing while filled up pretty spaces are. Thus, we add flower vases, fancy lighting, weird clocks, etc. everywhere. When you see a blank wall, you think of a canvas and the possibilities to make it better. There’s something about a blank wall, that bugs you. There is an urge to do something, however, minute it might be. Empty spaces bother us.
Now when I lie in my bed, facing my left, in the dark of the night, with the streetlight pouring in and illuminating my room slightly, I stare at the unoccupied space there and that empty space keeps bothering me. Yes, one would argue, given my tiny room, that much space is a necessity for movement to happen in the room, but that’s not what’s on my mind. Late at night, as my eyes are slowly adjusting to the dark, my mind starts filling this empty space between my bed and the door with anything from my imagination. Because if I don’t put something in that unoccupied space, I start thinking. What if that unoccupied space is actually occupied by something unthinkable? After all, my imagination of this world is only what I can see. Who says there aren’t things that I cannot imagine, simply because I haven’t seen them? Why is, what exists supposed to be visible or detectable? Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be. Just the two (maybe) of us, existing, within these four walls. A home not just for me. And who says I cannot co-exist with something I don’t know of?
Curiosity is human nature, and to err is human too. We are humans because we aren’t perfect. This vast universe holds a multitude of secrets, which regardless of how superior we consider ourselves, would possibly be beyond our understanding. As said by Carl Sagan :
There are perhaps 1011 neurons in the brain, the circuit elements and switches that are responsible in their electrical and chemical activity for the functioning of our minds. A typical brain neuron has perhaps a thousand little wires, called dendrites, which connect it with its fellows. If, as seems likely, every bit of information in the brain corresponds to one of these connections, the total number of things knowable by the brain is no more than 1014, one hundred trillion. But this number is only one percent of the number of atoms in our speck of salt.
So in this sense, the universe is intractable, astonishingly immune to any human attempt at full knowledge. We cannot on this level understand a grain of salt, much less the universe.
So sometimes, I fall asleep having made peace with whatever exists in the empty space, and others, I continue being paranoid until I fall asleep. Somehow between my struggles at staying alert, and falling asleep, I find a balance. Like a child finding a balance between studying and play. Like finding a balance between what my heart wants, and what my brain thinks about the untouched corners of my heart, the deep crevices of my brain that stores all my darkest thoughts and memories, and what it needs for it. Like wanting comfort for the same one day, and being the comfort for the same another. Because aren’t we space, with a perfect balance of elements, perfect chemical reactions and composition, and years of evolution and nature’s experimentation which lead to what and how it is now, in a vast vacuum, which our universe lies in, which we call space?
Author: Srushti G
Email: [email protected]
Author Bio: Industrial Designer in progress, and aspiring author. Too many dreams, and only one life. Very lazy, quite introverted, and will not step out if not required. Feel free to send a Pizza in.
Link to social media: Twitter @Srushti_98
