I Might Set Fire to This Later

My favorite post on Letterboxd

By reibureibu
Reviewing The Man Who Sleeps

After graduating college I thought I had things figured out. I had a paid internship that provided housing and other interns as roommates, at a maritime museum that was next to the ocean. Every day I woke up to my seaside surroundings and interacted with all kinds of people both indoors and outdoors, and every week we visited another museum to learn more about the field and just hang out as a group. In retrospect, that was one of the best periods of my life; certainly it was one of the most vibrant, and meaningful.

Though I wouldn't know it at the time, what I did next was the complete antithesis. I essentially worked a miscellaneous office job, doing whatever leftover tasks were necessary that no one else wanted to do. I had coworkers I never connected with no matter what I did, and I became even lonelier with how a few came so close (I still wish them well, they were really good people). And so I came home with the daylight all spent to a shabby floor I shared with two other people. They were terrible at cleaning. They also claimed the living room. So I spent all my time locked in my small room just staring at a screen that bathed the space sickly white, until it was too late to get any restful sleep.

This job was temporary so after a while it ended, but I still had a few months left on my housing contract. So instead of spending that time being productive like I promised my parents, my friends, and most importantly myself, I spent that time delving even deeper into exile. I never left the house (I barely left my room) and the only thing I ever did was find momentary escapes from my increasing anxiety. Video-games I took no pleasure in, books I never read, music I listened to once... honestly I couldn't even really tell you specifics because I barely remember anything at all.

The few times I went outside was a haze, like stepping outside into a bright, blinding fog that took every ounce of will just to put one foot forward over the other. Nothing felt real; nothing seemed real. The time spent outdoors warped like the paint on my walls. So I went back inside. At least there time stood still.

And when I ran out of all the food I had in the fridge, I just started ordering delivery online. And I ordered a lot, so I could eat a lot, because eating was the only thing that still gave me pleasure. And by ordering so much I had food for days; you'd be surprised how long pizza (and pasta, and burgers, and anything fried, and-) can last at room temperature.

Yeah, it's disgusting. I was disgusting. I just had containers of food lying around on the floor so I could eat it whenever I needed to feel something, anything; I probably smelled like stale grease all the time, plus I had no motivation to shower at all; I was unemployed and unproductive, wasting all my money on stuff I didn't need to buy that only gave me fleeting moments of joy; I stayed up all night feeling like a soulless husk so I could wake up with the next day already almost gone; and I stopped talking to all my friends and family, because suddenly that phone became too heavy to lift when I needed to text one of them back.

I guess that sounds like maybe I had depression. I don't know. I think you rarely know when you do. At the time, it all just seemed so... normal. How different normal was then, compared to when I was at sea.

"It is on a day like this one, a little later, a little earlier, that you discover, without surprise, that something is wrong, that you don't know how to live and that you never will. Something has broken."

That's the story of The Man Who Sleeps, or at least, my story of when I was most asleep. The film ends, right there, at the absolute nadir of despair. The period when things are at their utter worst, yet, paradoxically, when one is at their most accepting of it. Perhaps it's because that's when we succumb to it entirely, at an uneasy peace now that we've renounced all else.

But I won't end it here, no, because that's not where my story ends.

If you told me at the time that I would get better, I wouldn't have believed you. If you told me at the time that I would start enjoying hobbies again, I wouldn't have believed you. If you told me at the time that I would reconnect with my loved ones, I wouldn't have believed you. And if you told me at the time that I would find any sense of worth in myself and my life, I especially, vehemently, would never have believed you.

But I did. I woke up. I am no longer asleep.