… you know, sometimes I just lie there like that, for quite a long time actually.

Right in front of my window there’s a fairly big street, and from my bed I can hear the constant rushing and humming of the cars. Then I always close my eyes and imagine it’s the sea, and the rushing and humming are the roaring waves and the spray crashing straight into my face.

That somehow fits well with the dizziness too, as if the house were a boat, rocking incessantly on the open sea.

Maybe loneliness makes you inventive, or maybe it’s the limited stimuli—I don’t really know. The only thing I do understand is my longing for nature. When it rains, I am happier than when it doesn’t. I think that’s because I can feel and hear the direct influence of my surroundings. In general, hearing is hugely underestimated. Seeing is more important to most people, but to be honest, seeing bores me. I’ve been seeing the same thing for months, you know? My ceiling, the dusty framed picture of me and my best friend, the dirt next to my bed. Honestly, it’s even more exciting to close my eyes, because I don’t know what I’ll see behind my closed lids—almost like going outside, at least in my memory.

And then there’s still touch. I have so much time, you know. For hours, if not days, I’ve traced my blanket with closed eyes, carefully mapping every fold and every imperfection. I know the feeling of fabric on my skin better than the symptoms in my body. And somehow it’s never the same. It’s always the same blanket, of course, but the feeling is never the same. Sometimes I just lightly brush my hand across the surface, then I press, I grab, I pull and twist. It makes me feel good; it gives me something to hold on to on my little ship. I haven’t had the blanket for that long; honestly, I only got it recently from my girlfriend, but it already feels so incredibly familiar. I guess it must be the silence that makes things more accessible than noise.

Anyway, I always end up wishing that everyone had a blanket like that—one for comfort and forgetting. I mean, I find protection in it too. When the pain torments me or the shortness of breath crushes my lungs, it’s always there, somehow holding me and lying on top of me. Lying there and loving me.

Not very often, but sometimes, I also open the window—especially when it’s windy. Then I imagine I’m a pirate or something like that, and the exhaust fumes of the cars are the salty air of the open sea. What I’m trying to say is: I never wished for a life like this. But you end up where you have to end up—on the open sea or alone in bed.