So remember when I said I was going to bed?? lol 💀

I did not go to bed. I kept reading until like 5 AM, passed out on the floor with the papers, woke up to my alarm two hours later, sat through my 9 AM lecture on Zoom understanding nothing, and now it's almost midnight and I'm back on my floor with the papers again instead of doing my stats assignment that is due TOMORROW. We love a self-destructive pattern of avoidance 😅

Okay so something weird just happened and I want to write about it but I need to back up first because there's context.

I'm not so sure about the dream journal theory anymore. The more I read the more I'm finding actual continuity across pages, like recurring names and references to the same events that stay consistent even on pages I found in totally different parts of the apartment. Dreams don't have continuity. Dreams don't have supporting characters that develop. There is something here, like an actual narrative, and I think if I can get the pages in some kind of order it might piece together into something coherent. I just can't do it yet bc it's still a mess and so am I.

But here's the thing that's really getting to me tonight and why I can't just put it down and do my homework like a normal person.

This apartment is in the notes.

Not like, mentioned in passing. Described. The radiator and the sounds it makes. The kitchen light flickering. The view from the window. The way the walls sound when it's windy. The guy from the papers lived through all of it. I've been here over a month and I've mostly gotten used to it. You adapt. You put on a podcast to drown out the radiator, you stop flinching when the light flickers, you learn which floorboard creaks. Maintenance has not come despite me asking three times so you just deal with it, and honestly finding out someone else also dealt with the same stuff is kind of validating?? Like oh good I'm not just a girl who can't handle living alone 😅 But on two hours of sleep, stir crazy, running on caffeine and nothing else, I'm sitting here imagining I'm in the same spot he would've been writing in and every sound in this apartment is hitting different. The radiator, the wind, the floorboard. Sensory overload. I can't stay in here for too long.

I did get out earlier. Walked to the gas station for my red bull and zyrtec run, same route I always take. And even that felt off. There's a restaurant I pass all the time that I'm almost positive from his descriptions is where he worked. I've walked past it a hundred times and never thought about it. But today I looked at it and it looked back. Like the town rearranged itself a little bit. Like there's a layer underneath what I normally see and now I can't unsee it.

I know that sounds dramatic. I'm very tired and I've had too much coffee and not enough food and I should not be trusted with my own thoughts rn tbh. But this is not what I expected when I opened that box last night. This is not just a dream journal or creative writing or random rambling. There's a person in these pages and he lived right here and something happened to him and idk what yet but I can feel it in the way the writing changes.

Okay. The thing that happened.

I was reading on the floor just now, getting drowsy, stack of his pages in my lap. And someone said my name. Behind me. Clear as anything. I turned my head so fast I hurt my neck.

Nobody there. Obv nobody there. I live alone.

But I heard it. Not muffled, not distant, not like a thought that got too loud. My name, in a voice that was not mine, from a direction that was not inside my head.

So here's what that is. That's hypnagogia. It's what happens when you're sleep deprived and your brain starts dreaming before you're all the way under. Auditory hallucinations at the threshold of sleep are incredibly common and I literally studied this my very first semester. This is what I get for pulling an all-nighter reading mystery papers on my floor like a horror movie protagonist. I did this to myself and I'm actually kind of embarrassed I flinched 😂

Okay. Stats assignment is not happening tonight. Not happening at all in this state. I need to sleep before I start hearing full sentences. On second thought maybe I should do this again before my research methods exam on Thursday. Might just hear the answers 😂

Only kidding. Okay. Goodnight. For real. I mean it this time.

(I think I mean it this time.)