For who knows how long I have laid around languidly, bed rotting away and dreaming about better places. Sleep hits me so deeply that I forget that I’m gently passing by this life. In my dreams, I’d wake up to magical adventures and it is right there and only there that I live. I wish I can recount them all but only glimpses slip back into my mind. During brief moments of consciousness, I’d reach for this glowing portal that my palm fits neatly around. Secrets will be spilled and thoughts will be subdued. Soon, I’ll be asleep again. This is my doomscrolling episode, digested, transcended. Like aimlessly hopping off a train, I’m transported by each episode through time and space, into a different city, a different harbor, a different peace. Each turnstile is a passage, and my bed, like the internet, becomes an intermission from all the things I hope to ignore.

The humidity and the stifling heat make it hard to breathe. Sweat soaks through my t-shirt and I feel as if sickly sweet honey is drenched all over my body. Sometimes that feeling of getting into feels too smothering: getting into the bustling city without an exit, getting into a childhood pastime, getting into a night knowing things will be ok, getting into someone’s elbow nook… How many street corners have I turned just so I can daydream about something someone somewhere else? I wake up out of breath. The physical sensation of suffocation keeps me alive. I’m almost human, except all my experiences are filtered through the pixels on my screen or the haze of my dreams. They are the only lens in which I experience joy, sadness, fear, anger. Nonetheless it feels all too real.

If my waking hours are a sequel to my dreams, have I ever been asleep? I sink a little deeper into the embrace of my bed, like a hug, a cuddle that keeps giving back.

Maybe it has been only been a few days, or perhaps, a few months when I finally got out of bed. Unlike a bear out of hibernation, I am not rested, just going through the motion of REM cycles. The time on my phone says 6:05 pm. I check my messages and I have received a slew of texts inviting me to various social gatherings.

I look around my room at the concrete walls closing in on all sides.

Fall asleep.

It’s the summer and I’m lying face down on the sprawling LA pavement.

Wake up.

I look at the time on my phone again. It’s 6:07 pm.

I step out into the world and is hit with a breeze of crisp air. I let my my lungs expand to hold everything in for a moment before letting it all out. It was autumn. The leaves have acquired a splash of warmth that accentuate the deep hue of brownstone apartments lining the streets.

The party is held at an apartment and can be recognized from far away through the lights and music emanating from the windows. By the time I get there, the place is already packed with mostly unfamiliar faces. I greeted the host and met a few new bodies but immediately forget their names. I recount the details of my otherworldly journeys to the other guests who seem transfixed by these tales. Who can tell what’s reality at this point? Not me at least. I took a quarter tab of LSD to just see where the night takes me.

It’s starting to get a little stuffy here. I’m about to head out when Cade turns to my group and says they know a place we can go after. What is it, Marisa asks. Can’t spoil it, but I promise it will be worth it.

A score of us head out into the night, taking to the streets like stay cats. We fill up the entire sidewalk and chattered loudly amongst ourselves. The people behind us are clearly annoyed by us. Oh well, whatever, I figure, they can just go around.

Meandering through a few city blocks, we alas arrive at a humble street corner marked by a bodega. In between the fence that surrounds an apartment complex is a blue door. Gleaming, vibrant. I’m surprised I’ve never seen it before.

Here it is, proclaims Cade. So it’s inside this apartment complex? Someone says. They chuckle, no, but you’ll wanna take your shoes off before entering.

Cade turns the knob and pushes against the door, which at first seems almost unwilling to budge. And then, as it opens a flood of light emits from the entrance and cuts through the dense night. A trickle of sand spills out. I peer beyond the doorway and am stunned by the scene before me—a cerulean sky stretches on for days over a beach that embodies the platonic ideal of its very essence.

I step through the frame and run towards the ocean. It was nostalgia and serenity like I’ve never experienced before. I know exactly where this is, and it’s been so long since I’ve been back home.

Home, the bliss that it evokes hits me in an inescapable way. I’m not even halfway to the water when I lose all tension in my legs and collapse into the earth. Its memories of a brighter past, interlaced with the sand enveloped all around me, become a cushion where I can finally rest my mind. My eyes fill up with drops of tears that surge into gushes of water pouring out of me. Through my blurry vision of this sobbing mess, the warm beige of the sand melds with the deep azure of the ocean, creating the most magnificent gradient that I can never recreate on any digital canvas. Knees deep in the beach, I’m not sinking, I’m falling home. How long has it been since I’ve experienced anything this beautiful? How long has it been since… I experienced anything?

On this cloud, this cloud formed by sand, homesickness, and psychedelics, I realize I am the embodiment of a sheep. Not a sheep in the “mindless follower” sense, but a sheep in the sense that I am a body that is made up of softness and rest. I can finally rest, not through sleep but through an understanding that there is nothing to worry about anymore.

And then I see you.

You, whose smile glistens under the blazing sun.

I look towards you. I get goosebumps just looking at you and feel as if I am drowning in an endless abyss of the ocean. But all 7 houses of you are in Leo so I must cling onto you. You turn towards me to ask me something. I don’t recall what it is but it doesn’t matter anyways. It was just a formality. I barely know you through words, but in a way, I have known you for centuries. Your face, I’ve seen it over and over again like a recurring character in my dreams. As you hold me I get flashbacks of that feeling of getting into over and over again in my hypnopompic state. Our lips lock and I taste our past lives. The kisses turn into way too much pda, but it’s sensual, demonic.

Later, people around me ask why I was doing this, as lions are dangerous to sheep. I tell them I like it that way.

I take a dive into the waters during midday. The surface of the ocean appears to be holding up a mirror against the sun, reflecting its brilliance back to the whole world. The water feels cold to the touch at first, but quickly begins feeling like comfort, like a cozy blanket that I can snuggle in. I sink into it and as it feels all too familiar. Holding my breath, I plunge under the ocean’s surface to muffle out the sounds of the crashing waves and the chatter all around. Slippery, slick, slouching towards rebirth.

When night falls, we all decide it’s time to pack up and leave. We kiss goodbye, but I know I’m never gonna see you again, at least not in the flesh. I step through the blue door and it’s already dawn in this world.

I walk back to my apartment. Somehow, my journey home has always been a solitary one. The sun peers into the eastern horizon, signaling the start of a new day, perhaps a new chapter. I would expect myself to feel inspired, in awe, but all I feel was an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. You left an imprint on me, one that will slowly fade away like all the others before.

I’m left alone again, again, over and over again. My dreams and reality always end the same. I need to take another pill to fill up this emptiness. But for now, I’m going back to sleep (zZZ).