Midnight Insomnia Options

[Admiral FCS]

I do feel that if we had a philosophy sub-forum, this might go better there... or just stay in general discussion. The mood's just too heavy for spam.

Some of you may remotely remember me as a hot-headed kid from around '08-'10... well, it's been 7 years, long enough for me to have finished high school and get a bachelor's degree. Heading towards a master's degree... but that's not quite relevant.

It's just that in some ways, I owe the people of this forum - and of course Fallout - my first steps into the cyber world and talking to a mature crowd, so I don't quite know where else to put this. I hope you can put up with this, and thanks for silently reading the thoughts of this somewhat sentimental midnight, insomnia-induced rambling.


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My bachelor's degree gave me an unhealthy habit of not really falling asleep at all before 1am. Alas, today is one of those days.

I often find myself thinking about matters of life and death as I go to sleep, and today isn't really that different. Also happens that a competition I'm participating deals with the problem of impermanence, preservation and memory... and I find myself thinking back of my early days on the Internet, and inevitably, that led me to think about James.

James Brown - CommanderJB - passed away long before I was a mature person. I don't remember much about him, even with the forum search tool. What I do remember, however, was a knowledgeable, kind and gentle soul, an integral part of the forum and the RoTR team, and despite my naivete and short-temperness at the time, he allowed me to become a friend of him on the forum. Then, all of a sudden, he just passed away. Gone. I never forged a deep relationship with him; all I have to remember him is fading memories.

Memory is such a confusing and utterly mind-wrecking thing. I barely graduated, and already the memories of those past five years are either repeating themselves in my mind, making themselves more beautiful than I swear they were, or gradually, but certainly, trickling away. The night certainly isn't helping. It starts to rain quite frequently around this time of the year, and it becomes rather bleak. Days kind of just blend into each other without ever being bathed in sunlight. A torrential rain might help with putting me to sleep, but that gentle shower outside certainly doesn't help, because in the darkness, I hear my thoughts so much more than I would want to. I feel the need, the urge to write it down somewhere, to purge it from my thoughts.

......

Do you let memory go? Do you purposely forget? Or do you consider memory to be a duty, even if it is painful to remember?