19 November 2025
She slept too often, and never by choice. The world came to her in fragments, a handful of seconds, a conversation half-heard, a face she recognised only because it had aged since last time. Each waking was a jolt: sunlight in a different place, a clock she didn’t remember setting, the smell of dinner when she thought it was morning. She lived inside a stuttering reel of moments, skipping through her own life.
At first, she fought it. She drank bitter teas, walked the length of the garden at night, pinched her arms to stay in the same hour. But the drowsiness was patient. It waited at the edges of her vision, humming softly until she surrendered. When she woke again, her teacup was cold, her hair longer, and someone was telling her that another year had passed.
People grew old around her like time-lapse flowers. The neighbour’s child became a mother; her parents turned frail, voices thinning with distance. Each time she blinked, something was gone: a house, a season, a laugh she hadn’t finished. She began to write herself notes, small anchors to tether her to the present: _It’s spring now. You live alone. You are still you._
But even those blurred over time. Her handwriting changed; her reflections became strangers. Some nights she dreamed of stillness, a world that would wait, unmoving, until she could catch up. When she woke, the morning light was already shifting, quick and careless, racing ahead without her.
The Compulsive Dreamer • Opuss № I