show must go on

it was not so that the dreams would have been better or even more interesting than the reality. on the contrary, most of the time the images his brain painted were what you could only categorize as dull. sometimes his dreams were frightening and on a few occasions -- though these types of dreams had been recently increasing in number -- they caused anxiety that more often than not remained with him throughout the day. it was therefore obvious that it wasn't an escape to some magical wonderland that he yearned for; not a release from the grip of reality for the sake of bliss or a cheap rush provided by the unfathomable chemical processes in the organic matter that was the source of his being.


instead, the reason for the gradually growing number of hours he spent asleep was that when he slept, whenever he dreamed -- it was also when his life was his, his feelings were his own and everything that followed thus more genuine than anything he experienced in his so -called real life. even his control or the lack of it felt real, not fabricated. he didn't have to worry about things irrelevant to him, and he wasn't forced to take interest in things just because he should, or was expected to. so what did it matter if the events themselves weren't that interesting or if they even were unpleasant at times; what was important was that it was him experiencing them.


in his dreams everything that happened happened to him, not to the someone he had been made out to be. his fears and joys and uncertainties were his own and not of the man in the life of whom he existed when in the world of the awake. when he slept his hands still found the curve of K's back and their marriage hadn't been reduced to list of things he did in an unsatisfying way; when he dreamed the essence of what had once been the most important relationship of his life hadn't been shrank down to the annoyed but patient explanation of how the way he did the dishes was wrong.


he had realized the difference between the two worlds quite a while ago now. at first the notion had been passing and he hadn't paid much attention to it, managing to dismiss it with a shrug of his shoulders. but with time, as how he had ended up being slowly drifted further and further from what was really him, his acknowledgement of the situation started to bother him with a voice so loud it was impossible to mute down. that was about the time when he had started to add to his hours of sleep -- had it been out of fear of losing himself completely or because the man he was when awake was so foreign to him that it exhausted him, he couldn't tell.


he slept because in his dreams he was still him; the world in which only he existed was the only one where he still did.