Women's Creative Collective Prompt 3
Go to sleep and set your alarm clock for 3am. Wake up at 3am and write whatever comes to you. It is the magical hour of slept over epiphanies, sandman soliloquies, the lucid writing in between dreaming and waking.
At 3am, I did not have to wake up. I was trying to sleep. I could not. This was no magical hour for me. It is 7:08 am now, Bangkok time. I slept restlessly earlier yesterday evening, but I could not fall asleep. Jet lag. And stress. I have that same pounding sensation in my chest. I got a massage today. I couldn’t relax. The pounding happened then too, and I thought I was going to die because I could not breathe.
It is sadness.
And I need healing.
There are always those types of people (I’m usually one of them) who looks around in developing or underdeveloped countries and thinks, wow, I’m lucky. I’m lucky I don’t have to be one of these poor people, the world is suffering so much blah blah blah I should be thankful. Look how happy they are, these poor kids.
I’m in Bangkok right now, and I look around. In the hotel lobby, 3am. 3 French guys flock in. Giggling Thai girls in hand. It looks exactly like what it is. I look at them. They’re taking pictures in compromising positions. I wonder what is going through all of their minds.
Probably sex. And money.
It’s not that difficult here, to get all the bodily pleasures that you want, and for cheap.
But then the harsh realization: there is no love here. Everything is meaningless.
The richest people here are the poorest. And they live no happy lives. They sit across from the biggest mall in Southeast Asia, limp babies in their arms, holding up empty cups for a spare baht. And yet in their desolation, they are rich.
I wonder that if survival from day to day was the only thing I had to worry about, if I would be all the happier. Perhaps not. But I would be so much richer.
Jessica- that’s my name. It means wealthy in Hebrew.
Perhaps this is a sign.
