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Martha Whatley hails from Salisbury, and is a music journalist and writer. She will turn 30 this summer and is currently working on a novel along with a collection of essays. Her twenties have been mostly transatlantic and she spent a number of years living in Boston, Massachusetts. She has studied at Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and at the University of Kent.
Contact: mwhat001 [at] gold [dot] ac.uk

How to Induce an Epiphany

 

One.

My bones never felt like mine. It鈥檚 as if I have borrowed a skeleton and am trying to flesh it out 鈥� to animate it 鈥� but my blood and muscles and cells and tissue pulse and ring with such a deep sense of unease that I am rendered immobile. 

I pull at my skin the way people pull at their clothes. It doesn鈥檛 fit well. It doesn鈥檛 sit right. It鈥檚 tight and restrictive, but it鈥檚 the only thing holding me together because underneath I have completely fallen apart. 

When the Darkness really takes hold of me, my heart beats so hard against my motionless frame it鈥檚 as if it鈥檚 trying to escape the body and ribs that cage it. Its rhythm becomes more irregular and unsteady under the reign of chronic insomnia and stabilizing chemicals, but still it thuds and pounds against my insides 鈥� desperate to separate itself from the Me that has all but given up. 

I fluctuate between limitless mental activity and complete nothingness when the Dark sets in, but my stay on the latter side is usually much longer. Emotional middle ground has been demoted to mere wasteland and my heart, the only part of me with any fire left, knows it鈥檚 time to get out. 

The only hope I have left thuds frantically in my chest with the defiance of someone who has decided to cut their losses and run. But the door I need to run through isn鈥檛 open to me, yet.

I hadn鈥檛 got up in three days. The last time I showered was sometime before the weekend 鈥� before I got back 鈥� and today鈥檚 Thursday. I鈥檝e been existing in this suspended half-life where time doesn鈥檛 run in straight lines and my eyes get so heavy that I worry closing them will cause them to sink back into my skull. 

It鈥檚 not that I wasn鈥檛 tired; I was exhausted, but rest just couldn鈥檛 find me. The relief of sleep often 飞辞苍鈥檛 grace a troubled mind. There鈥檚 no quiet, no end 鈥� too much mental resistance.

The blanket on top of me felt as heavy as a car and I was trapped beneath its weight. I can鈥檛 get up. This is what happens when the Darkness creeps in. The 飞辞苍鈥檛蝉 quietly mutate into 肠补苍鈥檛蝉. 

奥辞苍鈥檛 implies there鈥檚 a choice. A 飞辞苍鈥檛 would be nice. 

Rose-hued light was starting to sneak in through the gap in the curtains, casting the kind of glow that only comes from a biting autumn sunset onto my sheets. I craned my neck to look outside and the sky was pink. It was the kind of sky people would stop what they were doing to admire. Only I looked at it for a different reason. I was chasing reassurance; to know that the world was still out there whirring away beyond the confines of these four walls, to know I still had some kind of grasp on reality and could rely on those instincts you develop as a kid. You know, the ones that allow you to interpret the language of the universe around you 鈥� to tell the time based on the kind of light you have, or predict the weather from the way the air smells.

I needed to make sure I hadn鈥檛 lost these instincts because I鈥檇 become so detached lately that I was struggling to recognize myself. 

鈥淵ou smell like the cold,鈥� my mother would tell me as she opened the door to let me in after school. 

This comment always marked the start of my favorite time of year. Every day starting October first I鈥檇 rush home and ring the doorbell at 4pm, wondering if that would be the day I鈥檇 finally smell like the cold. That day usually came around mid-month and I鈥檇 wait all year for it. The cold smell returned and then the best holidays followed: Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas and New Year. 

These holidays aren鈥檛 the same anymore. They lost their shine a long time ago. So did a lot of other things. 

I鈥檝e started to smell the cold again. For years I鈥檇 buried this sense 鈥� the nostalgia choked me 鈥� but it鈥檚 slowly creeping back in and the distance has relieved some of the pressure. It鈥檚 one of those things I notice on people I鈥檝e never met before when they sit down next to me on public transport or walk past me as they enter buildings, and I feel an instant affinity with them. My past collides with my present and for a few moments the irreconcilable gap between them closes. 

Instead of working on what troubled me, I had wasted years just layering tape over the cracks in the form of well-timed distractions to convince myself I was better. When the tape began to peel, I was left with hundreds of fractures that had me on the verge of caving in and eventually, I broke.

Rebuilding is exhausting. You try and get back to the familiar, but the reconstruction is always a little off 鈥� a little different. You take shortcuts to make up for lost time and when you finally get to where you thought you needed to be, you still don鈥檛 recognise anything. The familiar departs and the feeling of home is replaced with a growing, disjointed sense of not belonging. There is often collapse because these new foundations aren鈥檛 strong enough to hold you. Quick fixes never last and you have to make this mistake a few times before the lesson really hits, but collapse can be good. It forces you to stand still among the rubble and confront the mess you鈥檝e been running from, one brick at a time. 

Maybe this is why I鈥檝e moved around a lot. 

Towns.

Cities.

Counties.

Countries.

Continents. 

When I鈥檓 not moving 鈥� when there鈥檚 no transience in my life 鈥� I fall prey to atrophy. This is where I鈥檓 at now. I鈥檝e been back in this country for 4 months. The settling in period has passed and normality is trying to resume but I can鈥檛 acclimatize. 

I don鈥檛 know where I belong anymore. My definition of home has faded and every time I return to a place I once lived, I can鈥檛 figure out how to fit back into my old life there so I stay a while 鈥� just long enough to feel the unsettling drag of discontentment 鈥� then pack up and leave again. Hopelessly transatlantic.

Different versions of myself stay behind as I move on - I shed the layers I no longer need as I travel 鈥� but when I return, these ghosts are patiently waiting to be reunited with me.  

They reattach themselves to me at the heels and I can鈥檛 kick them loose. Every different incarnation of myself fuses together - a warped collective consciousness taking on a singular form - until the translucency lessens and a black outline appears. They inhabit my shadow and it haunts me at night, lurching and trailing two paces behind me, reminding me of what I can鈥檛 let go of. 

The pink light was still flooding in through the curtains and it illuminated a triangle of fabric on my blanket. The pattern on it started to form shapes the longer I stared. The shapes became pictures and the pictures shifted into focus, revealing themselves to me in the design鈥檚 negative space. I saw faces. Every time I blinked I鈥檇 see something different; always faces, but the expressions changed from fright to suspicion to laughter to fear to pride. I was being taunted by all the emotions I couldn鈥檛 show.

I propped myself up onto my elbows, the most energy I鈥檇 exerted in days, and pressed the palms of my hands hard into my eye sockets until colors began to swirl in my head. I stayed like this for a while and the dull pain throbbed and distracted me from thinking about how sometimes I see things when I鈥檓 like this: so strung out from extreme sleep deprivation that I struggle to differentiate between my waking life, dreams, and daylight hallucinations. They all bleed into one. 

A thud snapped me out of it and I rolled over, dragging myself to the edge of the bed to see what it was. David Foster Wallace鈥檚 Infinite Jest was laying face up on the hardwood floor. 

There are always books in my bed; it鈥檚 my other library. The space usually reserved for another person has been given to words written by strangers that I relate to more than people I鈥檝e dated for months and friends I鈥檝e known for years. 

I remember when I first read this novel and how comforted by his words I was. He wrote about being unable to connect, about loneliness, about being tired. An all-consuming fatigue. I knew of this particular strain of tiredness and thought it was mine only; a distinct shade of exhaustion that can only ever be found in the fight against letting it all in. With every breath I took in while reading it, I inhaled the words from the pages and they travelled down through my body, intact and upright, wedging themselves tightly into the spaces inside of me that hurt.

Two.

My eyes opened seconds before an ear-splitting electronic frequency pierced through the silence as if I knew to expect it.

It鈥檚 strange how we do that 鈥� how we get a sense something鈥檚 going to happen moments before it does. Gut feelings can go a long way in helping us to navigate the human condition and if you get really good at developing them, you can learn to read a situation like stage directions: a form of static time-travel accessible only by the most intuitive.  

It was dark. How long had I been lying there? 

I must have fallen asleep. 

This happens a lot when I鈥檓 in the middle of a period of extreme sleeplessness; I completely skip over the falling part. The realms of consciousness shift so fluidly around me that I often can鈥檛 tell if I鈥檓 awake or asleep, and swing wildly between staying up from 3 to 4 days at any one time to sleeping in excess of 16 hours straight. 

When things seem like they鈥檙e starting to return to normal and I do manage to shut down, it鈥檚 brief and interrupted 鈥� not enough sleep to fully function, but just enough to get by. 

I鈥檓 always barely hanging on 鈥� my hold isn鈥檛 strong enough and I鈥檓 slipping. 

The sound screeched and crackled like a dial-up modem trying to make a connection, and I could feel his energy buzzing in the room. It was the Illuminator. 

Whenever I hear it, he appears. He arrives in fragments: thousands of metallic shards that sweep in under doors or through cracks in windows. They repel each other so violently they create a whirlwind, fuelled by the Darkness. It swarms and surges, and its center becomes so hot with friction that eventually this vicious gunmetal mass turns to liquid. The second it reaches melting point, it stops moving. It鈥檚 like watching something on 16x the speed then hitting pause the as soon as the picture begins to make sense. It becomes jagged and still, suspended in exaggerated human form like a child鈥檚 drawing of an adult, and the sound turns to static. The it becomes a him. 

I never see him make his entrance, but as soon as this immobilising sound rings out I know he鈥檚 there 鈥� just out of my immediate line of vision, materialising mostly in corners. 

He was standing by the door. I turned my head slowly, trying not to look directly at him in the same way we鈥檙e taught not to stare straight into the sun. 

His outline was already visible as the blue light from the full moon crept in, replacing the sun that had warmed the room earlier. It caught the angles and sharp lines of his figure as he flickered and glitched 鈥� the way a computer screen with a loose wire or a television that hadn鈥檛 been properly tuned might.

鈥淭hey want us to sleep,鈥� he told me, his voice dense with reverb and decay.

I didn鈥檛 know who he meant by they 鈥� my therapist? My family? The friends I鈥檝e avoided seeing for what felt like months now because I鈥檓 so messed up I don鈥檛 know how to be around them 鈥� or anyone, really 鈥� when I鈥檓 like this? 

That鈥檚 the curse of the Darkness, when you've been fighting it for so long you get really good at hiding it when you need to. You always find a way to remove yourself from your own life, but with enough distance to pass your absence off as a clash of schedules, a series of unfortunate events, or something beyond your control. I鈥檓 so sorry I couldn鈥檛 make it, you say. Or I鈥檓 so busy; I keep missing your calls. Only you never even tried to make it and you weren鈥檛 too busy to take a call. You went home, crawled into bed with your clothes on and turned out the lights. You apologize and reschedule whatever it was you skipped out on just far enough ahead in the future for it to either be forgotten or for another excuse to seem plausible. The master manipulator. 

You can't always tell if someone's struggling and usually, if they are, they鈥檙e working overtime to keep it from you.

鈥淭hey want us to sleep,鈥� he repeated slowly, shifting and contorting until his head hung so low it looked like his neck was broken. 鈥淏ut you know better.鈥�

This is how it goes. Sometimes it takes him hours to form words, the syllables drag out with a slow violence that sound like knives scraping metal and I lie there, paralysed, forced to listen. 

鈥淵ou鈥檝e come this far.鈥�

I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself he wasn鈥檛 really there, that this was some kind of sleep-deprived delusion. Hell, if you tell yourself something regularly enough, eventually you might start to believe it. You鈥檒l believe anything if it holds you up when you鈥檙e struggling to stand, and my knees had been getting weaker by the day. 

Only I鈥檇 started to see him outside of my dreams lately. 

He appeared in alleyways, watching me from dirt clouds kicked up from dustcarts that settle almost as quickly as they billow up, moving with an unnerving fluidity from street to city block to district. He stalked me at work, interfering with the studio鈥檚 soundboard and radiating electromagnetic energy that appeared on the screen in the form of visual soundwaves and messed with my recordings. 

The only thing that never changed was the sound that followed him. It affected me like nothing else; it shattered the inside of my head and slowed my pace until I was dragging my feet under its influence. I saw him on the street - on good days 鈥� I heard him, but no one else seemed to notice. I opened my eyes. He was still there.

My pulse thumped against my temples and he fed off my fear, the tension in my body powering the clang of garbled metal that rang out around us.

鈥淕et up,鈥� he jeered. 鈥淗ey. Get up, Jude. Hey, Jude.鈥�

I brought my hands up over my ears, trying to block him out.  

My radio lit up and it lurched between static white noise and judders of undeterminable audio until it settled on a familiar melody. 

Paul McCartney鈥檚 voice struggled against the poor tuning, singing, 鈥楬ey Jude, don鈥檛 let me down鈥�, but every time the line finished it would skip back to the beginning of that third verse and he鈥檇 sing it again. With every repetition, it got slower and slower until the vocals mutated into a sinister drone and shifted across the room to where the Illuminator stood.  

Stop. I don鈥檛 want to hear that. The more I resisted the louder and more disorienting he grew. His words became distorted as he ingested the lyrics, like the words were made of tar and he couldn鈥檛 choke them down, regurgitating them first in reverse. Once he got them into order, he said them back to me over and over with increasing speed and pitch until his voice pierced the inside of my head and stung the backs of my eyes. 

No. Stop it. Stop. STOP. I howled into my pillow, a guttural, primal reaction, but the fabric muted me. I grabbed at my hair and pulled so hard it felt like I was trying to rip myself in half, like it would release this feeling that was swelling inside of me. Get out. Go. Stop. Stop it. STOP. I鈥橫 SO TIRED. I鈥橫 SO FUCKING TIRED. 

Heat rose to my face. I felt defeated. I started to cry. They came slowly at first, the tears. The emotions swirled bigger and faster and harder until I couldn鈥檛 contain the nervous energy I was harnessing inside of me any longer. 

That was the first time I had cried in sixteen years. I cried myself to sleep. 

Three.

I could never remember when the Illuminator first started to visit me, but I think I鈥檝e finally pieced it together.  

When I was 13-years-old, I had the same dream every night for exactly six months. A recurring nightmare. I tried to stop it, I tried to keep myself awake, but nothing worked. The more desperate to redirect my subconscious I became, the more vivid the nightmare seemed to get. 

The nightmare always played out in the exact same way. It never deviated from the original plot and nothing changed. The street I grew up on acted as the setting - the sidewalks I had cried on, bled on, thrown up on, and been happy on were central to the action. The only character I saw was a faceless man. His anonymity wasn鈥檛 self-imposed. He didn鈥檛 wear a mask or go out of his way to protect his identity; he just existed without one. 

Every morning I鈥檇 wake up shaking from what I鈥檇 seen in my sleep and it would take me hours to feel calm. By the time I started to feel at ease again it was bedtime and this sickening sense of foreboding would sneak back up on me. 

I knew there was no way something that consuming would come to an end quietly. It felt bigger than me; there had to be a purpose to it and I was sure it had to go out with more of a bang than it arrived with. How it鈥檇 do that, I had no idea because it wrecked pretty much everything in its path from my schooling to my sanity. 

The dream stopped without warning in early February, but the relief I felt was horrendously short-lived.

Later that day, my father died.

It had been a pre-cognitive dream full of telling symbols and imagery. My father was dying 鈥� he had been for six months - but in an effort to protect me from facing their mortality, my parents tried to play it down. Their actions mostly said it鈥檚 not that serious. Looking back on it now, I get it. I was young. How do you explain that to a kid? My recurring nightmare began around the time of his diagnosis and lasted the course of his demise. 

I鈥檇 probably picked up on what was happening around me and this recurring nightmare was my psyche鈥檚 own way of preparing me for the inevitable end. The loss and fear and guilt I felt in the dream were setting me up to go through it in reality. It鈥檚 as if all the answers can be found in sleep, which is the one thing that constantly evades me. This way of thinking kick-started what has turned out to be a lifetime of screwed up nights. 

If anything changes with my sleep pattern now, I question it and try to figure out if I鈥檝e missed anything in my waking life that鈥檚 presenting itself to me as a dream. I just can鈥檛 let this defining experience go and write everything off as just coincidence. I have a loyalty to the past that I just can鈥檛 shake; only my access has been revoked. I see it, but I鈥檓 kept away. It鈥檚 preserved behind the toughest glass and I鈥檓 banging, smashing my fists against it until my hands bruise and bleed and my body aches from throwing myself against it, but I鈥檓 not yet strong enough to break through. 

It was so obvious. Why couldn鈥檛 I see it? Why didn鈥檛 I realize he was dying and not just sick? I would have spent more time with him. I would have been nicer, more patient, more available, more anything.

I would have鈥�

If only鈥�

I wish I had鈥�

Why couldn鈥檛 I鈥�

I didn鈥檛 know鈥� 

I really didn鈥檛 know is what I tell myself. But I did know and acknowledging that kills me.

Things I鈥檝e blocked out are starting to reappear in my dreams. I have no control over them 鈥� they just show up and play out and I am forced to lie there and watch. I fight back. I retaliate. It鈥檚 not unusual for me to wake up with cuts, scratches, sheets twisted and wrapped around my throat, soaked-through pillows from where I鈥檝e cried out all the tears I swallow down when I鈥檓 awake. Maybe I am ready to confront them now, after all this time, but it needs to be my choice. 

For sixteen years I thought the man in that dream was my father, but now I鈥檓 sure it was the Illuminator. 

I still see it 鈥� that recurring nightmare - it鈥檚 weird how something that wasn鈥檛 real has become one of my most powerful memories. 

Since then, my ability to recall dreams has always been significantly stronger than my capacity to remember things I鈥檝e actually been through in real life. When people talk to me about my past it鈥檚 like they鈥檙e telling me stories from books; I sit there wide-eyed on the edge of my seat as if I鈥檓 hearing these tales for the first time 鈥� seeing nothing of myself in any of the narratives being relayed to me.

I鈥檝e erased so much of my history from my mind that when it does resurface in any form, it feels brand new. The pain is still so overwhelming that I have completely disassociated myself with it. Sure, I feel twinges of sympathy, as you do for any protagonist in a story, and there鈥檚 sometimes fleeting familiarity, but the attachment just isn鈥檛 there. 

Revisiting my life is mostly this destabilizing experience tinged with jamais vu 鈥� things I know I should recognize as mine feel so distant that I can鈥檛 claw them back. As well as coming back to me in dreams, memories have been returning to me in the air without warning and I reach up and grab at them. In my desperation for reunion I snatch too violently and tear them into pieces, and some of them blow away, leaving me with partial or skewed versions of reality. Things are often out of order or missing, and the details I need for completion are nowhere to be found. 

This is the problem with defense mechanisms: they have a time limit. Blocking things out might seem like the easiest solution, but in the long run it鈥檚 just a destructive dance of avoidance. You can tell capacity has been reached when the issues you鈥檝e been running from start to catch up with you. Information begins to leak out and it鈥檚 only a matter of time before the self-imposed restraints burst completely, flooding you with things you鈥檒l drown in. 

I鈥檇 been feeling increasingly unstable, but was self-medicating and trying to keep myself where the light was.  It was cold, the air smelled of my childhood. I had been at the cinema alone in the middle of the city. It was late October and Halloween season was in full swing. My favorite theatre was showing double features of 80s horror and B movies downtown. I often go there by myself at night 鈥� they have movie marathons that run from 9pm until 7 in the morning and it鈥檚 a welcome distraction from the stillness of my apartment if I know I鈥檓 not going to be sleeping. After the showing, I walked among the crowd with my headphones over my ears enjoying the anonymity. Inside the subway station, as I moved further down the escalator, someone behind tapped me on the shoulder to ask for directions so I took off the headphones and that鈥檚 when I heard it. That song. 

The last time I heard that song was at my father鈥檚 funeral. I鈥檒l Follow The Sun. It played while his friends carried the coffin containing his defeated body out of the church. I looked at the floor, not wanting to be there. I think I cried at the funeral, I must have done鈥� I can鈥檛 remember, but I shut it all out as quickly as I could. 

If I鈥檇 just kept my headphones on I would have walked right past the busker and not noticed. Instead, I turned my head to face him and stared, the chords weighing me down. When I got to the bottom of the escalator, I hesitated, and the people behind me threw their hands up in disbelief that someone would disrupt the flow of human traffic. The tourist lingered behind me, probably thinking I was about to help him, but I walked right up to the busker. I watched his fingers give birth to the melody, which had marked the end of a life I couldn鈥檛 accept was over. He nodded, expecting me to drop some coins into his guitar case, but I just lost it. I yelled and shouted, and punched the shiny tiles until I gave myself a boxer鈥檚 fracture, blood from my knuckles smearing the wall. My pain echoed underground as the song spun around me; a symphony of repressed grief. A couple of guys tackled me to the ground and I was taken to the hospital, where I was assessed and held for three days. When I got home last week, I tried to carry on as if nothing had happened, but I couldn鈥檛 work, people kept asking about my busted hands, and I just needed some time out. When I got into bed on Monday night, I just didn鈥檛 get up again. 

After my father died, then came more deaths, more funerals, and more traumas, both self-inflicted and external. 

Is it me? Am I the cause? At the very least, I鈥檓 the link. 

You start recovering from one thing and another comes hurtling around the corner to knock you back down. 

I want out. I WANT OUT. I 飞辞苍鈥檛 go through this again, I can鈥檛. I鈥檓 done. 

It has been a long time, but these forgotten parts of me are finally starting to come back. They return when the Darkness is at its strongest. 

Once the Darkness takes over and blacks everything out, this unwelcome reserve of energy kicks in. My main power source has been cut off, but the defense mechanisms spring into action 鈥� an internal battery back-up 鈥� and unblock themselves. They鈥檙e not strong enough to fully reboot me, but these little sparks of Self flicker in my mind in the hope that one might ignite something within me that 飞辞苍鈥檛 burn out. It鈥檚 like trying to light a match in the wind.

Hey, remember this? 

I鈥檓 tired.

I know, but look!

I just want to lie here, quietly.

It鈥檚 not like you鈥檙e going to get up, so I鈥檒l show you whether you like it or not. 

Please, don鈥檛. It hurts.

This is when the Illuminator appears. He exists in the nothingness 鈥� this other plane of reality we aren鈥檛 supposed to visit. It harbors the kind of darkness our eyes can never adjust to. He鈥檚 the caretaker of this domain and whenever I begin to enter it, he steps in. He can鈥檛 force me to leave; I have to make the choice to. His electricity is the trip switch.