Hello to you lovely people taking the time out to read this,

Thanks so much for your kind comments so far, I love knowing what you think so please get in touch!

So, last night I was lying in bed wide awake (naturally) wishing so hard that I was more sleepy at night time and less so in the morning. I just don’t understand how I find it so impossible to wake up, get out of bed and actually face real life not just drown myself in my uber soft throw  (Zara home – favourite shop ever). And before anyone says oo it’s your sleeping pattern, you should go to bed earlier yada yada yada… I’ve heard it all before and I’ve tried it all before. I just need the world to shift forwards a bit so we all go to sleep at about 2am and wake up at 10am. Anyway, I was lying there getting really frustrated and just started picturing my brain. Now, when I was younger I used to think that little mice in pastel coloured aprons worked traffic lights. They would shuffle around turning on the right light and they would slot all of the correctly coloured screen infront of the bulbs etc. After a few minutes of lying and brain visualising I realised that I saw my brain as operating in the same way (except this time it’s little monsters) which I have never consciously acknowledged before lol it was an incredible realisation. Anyway, this leads me on to a little story. I realised I had created an entire narrative for these little friends in my brain that I might as well share (just for lols – whether thats at or with me, whatever) … Enjoy.

First things first, whenever people have told you before that your brain is a pink/grey mass full of neurological crazy shit and electric buzzers carrying around your shit with lasers and shit, they were lying. They just say it so brain surgeons can justify why they spent so long drinking it up as a student (lol jk – respect). In actual fact, your brain has a hard casing which splits down the middle and opens up, just like a dolls house that is sectioned into four rooms. During the day all of the little monsters are scurrying around your brain, some in lab coats, putting stuff into filing cabinets and entering information into computers  (think Plankton from Sponge Bob and his massive computer wife – I think it’s his wife? I’m sure it is. Why am i doubting myself? You guys are intimidating.) But when you go to bed they all retire to their own rooms so they can focus on their specific activity.

Room one (top left) is the room of Yip; the room of tension. Yip is a burnt orange sort of colour with one eye and is splodge shaped. “Alright Yip, would you mind switching off your light and going to bed? All this tension is making me ache.” I said.  (I know I should enter a new line when someone starts speaking in order to make it grammatically correct or whatever the right word is but it just doesn’t work cos it looks like a new paragraph and just no, I’m just gonna put it on the line wherever it comes, ok? ok.) “Well Chloe,  I suppose I can switch off my light but you will have to consciously help me do it. Start from your head and relax everything, by the time you get to your toes, I’ll have switched it off.” Replied Yip. “Okay cool, that’s fair. Thanks mate.” Me and Yip are friends.

Onto room two. Yap. Yap is in the planning room. He is green and is the shape of a beauty blender. “Yap, please can we stop planning things now? I can do it tomorrow when I can write it in my diary and actually remember it.” Said I, being reasonable as ever. “Erm,  I’m not sure how I feel about that. You have a lot coming up and we should probably keep going through it like one hundred times JUST INCASE we forget something. And we need to plan for the best case scenario and the worst, JUST INCASE. And when are you going to fit in this bit of uni work cos looks to me like you’re pretty booked up? and oh shit you never replied to that text, when are you gonna see her? It’s been ages since you saw her hmm maybe we could fit her in Friday morning?” Little shit. After some time of my puppy dog eyes (but inwards of my head because it’s towards my brain so thinking about it the back of my eyeballs must have extremely good expressive qualities) Yap said “Look, I will reason with you. I will pack away my lever arch file with built in pocket on the inside cover and multicoloured page dividers as long as you promise me we will sit down tomorrow, with diary, and plan this all out.” “Okay Yap, let’s do that.” So he hops in bed, puts his cute little annoying feet under the cover and switches off his light. Phew.

Third room. Yop. He’s a tricky one. He’s maroon and is fatter on the bottom than the top. He looks a bit like a cartoon dog poo actually, you know the ones that look like brown coloured Mr Whippy’s, like the emoji? With little arms and legs. Anyway, he is master of the room of worry. So, here goes. “Yap, please may you switch your light off.” “I…I…I I can’t. What if something changes overnight and we don’t know about it? What if the we wake up and the world isn’t how we left it and no one else is around and we’re stranded? What if we don’t pass our degree? No but seriously Chloe, what if we don’t wake up to the alarm and are late for work and then loose our job? And then we’d have no money, and then we would get so far into our overdraft and not be able to pay off our credit card and then we would probably end up homeless and that would be cold and you know how much you hate the cold chloe omg and its getting colder and I don’t know if you have a coat thats warm enough but maybe you shouldn’t buy one just incase we don’t wake up to the alarm and loose our job, oh my god CAN IT BE SO?” he rambled. “Yap, let’s try and be calm. We can only control so much. Make yourself a horlicks (cos thats what my nan used to drink before bed) and lets go to sleep.” Yap nevously walked over to the light switch. With his finger quivering above it he says “Chloe I can’t, I just can’t. I can’t turn the light off because WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS.” After twenty  minutes of too-ing and fro-ing (how the hell do you spell that? I’ve never written it down before… looks like I’m speaking owl language) Yap quietly said “I will use the dimmer switch. I will try my hardest to turn it right down and keep it there, but I just have to have my room lit enough so I can be aware of what is going on.” Brilliant. Thanks ‘pal.’ Pussy.

And the fourth room. The room of the conscious. There is something special about this light switch… it can’t be turned off by me. And there’s something special about Yoop, the monster who occupies the room… he is deaf. I cannot speak to him and kindly flatter him into switching off his light.  It’s just whenever Yoop decides he wants to. Yoop has a habit of lying in bed and almost drifting off and then having a surge of energy where he gets up and does 100 skips with his skipping rope. Or sometimes he gets up, does one star jump and then goes for a leisurely swim. His energy levels are wack. Sometimes, if he decides to go on a two hour hike I scream at him JUST GO TO FUCKING BED AND SWITCH OFF YOUR DAMN LIGHT, but as he can’t hear me he carries on, blissfully unaware. Yoop is the king of the brain; if he switches off his light it trips out Yip, Yap and Yop’s, plunging the brain into a darkness that isn’t eerie, just beautifully peaceful. Sometimes there is a thunderstorm which invokes a bad dream, but other than that… as peaceful as a beach hut on stilts in the clear sea of Bora Bora. Lush.

 

From my imagination to yours x