new year's sludge
an unexpected but familiar pattern has emerged in my first days of 2023: a robust, gravity-like pull towards my bed which only strengthens the more i succumb to it. when i wake up in the mornings my mattress clings to my spine like a sticky, webby glue, compelling me to stay tangled up in its sheets. the force is so strong that i have no choice but to close my eyes and surrender, letting my body imprint itself deeper into the bed. in the early afternoon, sometime after lunch, the force returns anew: a hypnotic, whispering voice calls over to me from behind the closed bedroom door, drifting all the way across the living room to greet me at the dining table.
“come backkkk, my precious,” the voice says urgently, although it does not slither and hiss like the gollum’s but rather envelopes me the way i imagine a mother rabbit’s would as she calls out to to her young, wandering bunny. “come back and burrow with me in this warm, dark hole!”
similar to the sick version of me, i have a feeling that this nap-enticed self is an old friend, a cutout of myself from another dimension which is heavy and slow and filled with oozing sludge. i have experienced this sensation during other moments in my life, sometimes with darker emotional undertones, but the general feeling is often the same: an irresistible pull towards my bed, a lust for the pudgy comforter and cotton sheets, soft surfaces which do not judge or recoil in response to the heaviness in my brain and body but rather cradle and snuggle me close.
i am tempted to battle this sludge with productivity, time management, to-do lists. i’ve tried scheduling short, 15-minute naps in the mid afternoon in an attempt to negotiate a compromise with the gravitational pull: give in for just a little bit, then jump out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off. but inevitably i find myself hitting “snooze” once, twice, three times before i finally roll sideways out of the bed, rubbing crust from the corners of my eyes.
who knows what tomorrow or the day after that will bring? but for today, i surrender to this delicious nappy sludge, this hypnotic darkness underneath the sheets and behind my eyelids. this is me channeling my inner bear, doing my best rendition of mid-winter hibernation.
I like the idea of viewing this is a hibernatory state. Until the blankets refuse to give you back ha