The Six Year Long Winter

I feel like I have awoken on the very same chair I fell asleep on. Same chair, different room. Different house, even. Same chair, but now old and torn. It's almost as if I am sitting on a mirror and not on a chair. Because naturally, as time went on, everything has changed, including me. Just like this chair.

Not only do I look older, the loss of all these years painted onto my face like a painful reminder of wasted time. I also feel older, like a machine that got rusty from standing around for too long, not being of any use anymore. Every heavy step I take making it more and more clear that this neglected machine will need a lot of love, practice and maintenance to get its former shine back and properly walk again like it used to.

As of right now, I am not even sure why I woke up, or how. The only thing that matters at this moment is that I am awake, and that I am in fact walking, no matter how small each step is. I might not ever be able to climb mountains again, or leap through unexplored jungles, or travel all the worlds I had been dreaming about while being asleep. But I know the only way to find out whether or not this machine is able to get back to its former glory is by taking these baby steps. Just keep going, slow down if you have to at any point, but don't stop as winter will be coming back and your feet will freeze to the ground again. All the standing and waiting for them to thaw will make your eyelids heavy and your legs too tired to keep standing, ultimately putting you to sleep once again. And who knows how long that next hibernation will last. Another six years? Twelve years? God forbid it will last a lifetime. So I swear to myself not to put my fate into some divine being's hands, and instead use my feet to keep walking.

As I get up and step outside my room with the old, torn chair, and at last out the house, I feel the sun hitting my skin. For the first time in what feels like eternity it feels warm again, and it feels good. A wave of nostalgia hits me as I am walking down the neighborhood I haven't visited in so long. I can hear the same beautiful piano music playing that had been playing all these years ago, making my heart ache and the butterflies in my stomach flutter in excitement at the same time. Looking at all the various buildings along the streets, houses I built — old and dusty, none of them finished — I realize their state is a lot worse than how I had remembered them. And yet there is a sense of happiness, pride even. Seeing the buildings these very same rusty old limbs were capable of building, brick by brick, puts a smile on my face.

While strolling through this quiet neighborhood with the seemingly empty houses I notice some lights flicker on in some of them, and I realize I didn't wake up alone. Everyone that fell asleep with me — mundane people as well as mystical creatures — must have woken up alongside me. Probably as confused as me, still feeling tired and weak, but nonetheless thrilled to finally be awake again. One by one they come out of their houses, swarming and greeting me, welcoming me back. I feel like a mother being embraced by her children after waking up from a yearlong coma. Except we've all been in a coma, hibernating through an endless feeling harsh winter. It makes me wonder if Sleeping Beauty felt the same when the entire castle woke up with her as soon as her curse was finally lifted. Because I can't help but feel like my own curse has been lifted.

It did indeed feel like a cruel curse. I sure know I wasn't hibernating peacefully. Safely tucked away, with nothing that could harm or haunt me. I was haunted by conscious dreaming; being asleep and knowing I am asleep. And the most frightening part was not knowing whether I would ever wake up again. I was aware of being trapped in a horrible nightmare progressing at such a slow speed that every single step felt like wading through sticky goo. Yet not knowing how to wake up. No amount of screaming would awaken me, and no amount of running would be enough to escape the horrors that were haunting me in this state of slumber.

It wasn't like anyone could hear me scream anyway, or see me run. Nobody outside my familiar little dormant neighborhood knew I was sleeping. Or rather, that a part of me was sleeping and so desperately trying to wake up. Passion, creativity, enthusiasm, inspiration — call it whatever you see fit. But this comatose part of me was so huge, so essential, that it simply felt like I as a whole was not awake anymore. Hibernating through a winter storm with nightmares and horrors so icy cold that the only way of staying alive was to sleep through it. This seemingly everlasting winter allowed no warmth, no feelings, no fantasy. Perhaps some people that are close to me had a suspicion that something within me was shut off. That I was missing out on the very thing that had kept me going before. But nobody knew just how much I was missing out, was missing the ones closest to me. The souls only I know. I'd like to believe they missed me equally as much as I missed them.

Admittedly, not everything in this nightmare I've been trapped in was monsters and agony. In a way, even with the most significant part of my self sleeping, I did still create. But drawing blueprints is not the same as building houses. Nothing I created was of constancy, all of it eventually faded. Empty faces with no permanence, forever forgotten. Stories no one will ever read or remember, not even myself. I wonder if any of them were aware of their last moments. The last time they wandered through my imagination, until vanishing completely. Forever. I try to imagine how I would feel in their place. Does the thought of no one remembering me after I die sadden me, or fill me with a sense of calmness and serenity?

My gaze wanders through the small neighborhood as I ponder over that question. I want them to be remembered. I want the world to get to know them; build not only houses but mansions and palaces, even whole worlds that we will travel together. And I will write down their stories, and the stories of the ones that come after them, and I will share them with the world. I won't let their tales be mere unheard noises, echoing through my mind between the screams of the winter monsters that put me to sleep.

I am awake, and I will do everything in my power to not fall asleep again.