Flash Free Writing #1 Heart Check by Eva Ujhelyi

I used to be unable to sleep at night. Not because I had insomnia. Although, in the end I developed it anyway, but because I constantly woke up to my heart not knowing how to beat properly. It felt like a spasm, like a fist that is holding on to something that wants to be free. It kicks and screams and pumps, and stops and starts again and then stops… then kicks me in the chest like a horse that got spooked. Meanwhile, I’m just lying there or sitting up like a spectator. I have no power over what’s happening to my heart. Usually, if I quickly change position it helps to revert back to the right rhythm. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I start to feel dizzy like somebody sucked all the air out of me. Like if I would be on an EVA walk and my szkafander* would malfunction. Instant vacuum, almost unconscious while watching the whole scene from the sidewalk.

I couldn’t sleep because these spasms happened in clusters, very close to each other in time. (And you can’t sleep when your heart is doing a Patricia’s party from Widow’s Bay.) I try to calm myself down because the stress makes it worse. (But its hard to be calm when you feel like your heart can stop at any moment.) So I don’t sleep. And I can’t do anything else either. I can’t read and I can’t write. I can’t pay attention to songs or movies not even to a YouTube video I put on for background noise. I wait it out. Half-asleep. Zoning in and out, being at the edge of crying. Hoping it stops long enough so I can fall asleep for a few hours. In the end, sooner or later I sleep.

Then, it might happen the next day and the day after or the day after. Or maybe it doesn’t happen for weeks until one day a very bad one leaves me bedridden for days. And the worst thing about this is not the actual physical symptoms. It is bad. I am afraid, and it feels horrible but not being able to sleep not being able to calm my nervous system down is what makes me overwhelmed and burnt out. The fact that it takes me days sometimes weeks to be able to function again on my normal energy level and do anything else besides working.

It slowly eats you. It makes you hollow. Creates a shadow of yourself a mirage that hovers over your broken body, You are not really here anymore but you are not really on the other side either. Existing while not existing, washed out of all the colours and all the feelings apart from the most loyal of it all: anxiety. Always on high alert. Always afraid and always. Always, tired.

Then, when for weeks or even months nothing happens and you are happy and fine and functioning and you think, you naively think that maybe, MAY BE it’s over. It’s done, your body changed, your heart changed, maybe your electric system that runs through your heart changed. Maybe the magnesium helped, maybe changing your diet helped. Maybe eliminating all the caffein and working out daily helped. Maybe you got lucky.

Until one day, while you are happily tapping away on your laptop it comes the worst cluster of spasms that you ever felt. The fluttering feeling in your chest is so faint but its so frantic that you feel the panic rising at the back of your neck. You feel the hot flush burning your face while simultaneously all the blood leaves it in an instant and you turn to a pale, grey ghost with blue tinted lips. You shoot up from your chair, you try to walk it out, changing positions, pull back your shoulder so you don’t arch your chest, hence, you don’t squash your heart. You know by know, it doesn’t like that. But it doesn’t work it just keeps fluttering like a butterfly in a fist. Or a moth.

A summer moth flying through my window and crashing in to my face. Over and over. At first I thought its targeting me because it is confused and I usually sat in front of my computer, so the light of the screen would attract it. But the moth kept hitting my face over and over, even when I closed all the lights off. I remember I put both of my hands over it, capture it in a little ball making sure I leave enough space so I don’t squash it. I just wanted to leave it outside of my window.

I felt those frantic, panicking wings hitting my palms over and over. It felt soft but also hard and it tickled me. It felt desperate but strong willed. It wanted to live but didn’t know where to go or how. By the time I got to the window and let it go, as soon as I opened my hand the moth went straight to my face again. Never leaving me alone. Never stopping the relentless attempts at seizing the castle. Even though the castle gave up a long time ago and all it wanted to do was sleep.

So I went over to my sofa, and I grabbed my pillow and my bedding and I went to sleep. For the moth it didn’t took a minute, sixty seconds to aim towards my face and hit me with its prickly, soft and strong body. Over and over again. I pulled the blanket over my face. But I kept hearing the knock-knock-knock and it was hot and stuffy and there was a point where I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I climbed out of bed and captured the moth again. Gently. To take her through the window, out of my room so I could finally sleep. And as soon as I let her go she hit me in the face again.