Recursive

(click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[You wake up. It is raining.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[It's 12pm.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[You were dreaming again.] (t8n-depart:"blur")+(t8n-arrive:"blur")(click-goto:?page,"Dreams") <audio src"https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/light-rain-ambient-114354/" autoplay>

(enchant:?page,(text-colour:magenta))(click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[You stand in the middle of a large, open area. There are hundreds of people around. You can hear the clamor of their voices.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[It's something like a convention hall - a nice one. Tall white walls, lots of windows. There's tables with gold-colored table cloths full of food, people with drink trays. Everyone's talking and mingling. Except you, and a few co-conspirators.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[You don't know what it is you're smuggling out, or why. You never will. All you know is you go to one of the silver, multi-level carts bearing desserts and help someone else prepare it, making it look unsuspicious. Cookies and pastries and muffins decorate the top of the cart, and somewhere among them is something that's not supposed to be there, something that's not supposed to leave.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[You think the man helping you stock the cart, disguise your cargo, is an actual pâtissier, or caterer, or something. He knows what he's doing even if you don't. He arranges the cart just-so and nods. It's time.] (t8n-depart:"blur")+(t8n-arrive:"blur")(click-goto:?page,"Dreams2")

Lately you've slept like this every night. It's 2am, or later. You know you need to sleep but you don't want the day to end. You don't want to give up on it. Tomorrow you have to start over. Tomorrow you have to decide once again what the day will be. You stare at your phone until your eyes droop. You put it down and roll over, try to sleep. Instead your head fills with thoughts. (cycling-link:"You think about everything.","You think about work. How everything changes underneath you.","You think about your mother, about calling her. About the things you haven't forgiven her for. ","You think about [~~REDACTED~~]","You think about writing.","You think about reaching out.","You think about.","You think about sleep and the elusiveness of it.","You think about the next day when all you'll want to do is sleep.") (after:20s)[(t8n-depart:"blur")+(t8n-arrive:"blur")[[You think about waking up.->Waking Up]]]

It's getting better. I'm on three or four days of it getting better. The melatonin helps. I didn't want to take it. For so many reasons. I didn't want to rely on a tablet to give me something my brain can't give me. I'm on Lexapro for years, but the disappointment doesn't change. I don't want to give in. Staying awake lets me punish myself. Staying awake lets me sit in the quiet of it, in the ways I'm letting myself down. I don't want to fix my problems. Fixing one problem makes the others more real. If you've got a leaky roof and a draft, the draft seems so much more serious, more fixable, when the leaky roof is gone. I could just accept that I live in a rotting house. I could just catch my death and let it take me. This would be easier. But the cycle and the dreams have been driving me mad. (t8n-depart:"blur")+(t8n-arrive:"blur")(click-goto:?page,"Reoccuring")

I've dreamed of school so many times. Sometimes high school - always more run down, more horrible, grosser than either of the schools I went to. Sometimes it's college. That hurts worse. The idea of being stuck in high school - it's inevitability, it's stagnation. But I //left// college. I gave up, failed, because I was too broken and too poor to finish it. It was all I wanted. My dreams squandered and abandoned because I am weak. And in the daytime I can mostly ignore it. I can focus on other things. But my dreams remind me. (t8n-depart:"blur")+(t8n-arrive:"blur")(click-goto:?page,"College Square") (enchant:?page,(text-colour:orange)+(bg:(hsl:240,0.8039,0.5,0.55)))(enchant:?page,(bg:navy))

(enchant:?page,(bg:(hsl:300,0.8039,0.5,0.55)))[You're walking around your University, so big it's like a small town. Everything you could need is here. You can eat here, study here, work here, play here. But every time you wake up, you leave. You're walking down a tight street, packed with shops and restaurants. Everything is within walking distance, and every day there's something to explore. You have the world at your fingertips. [[But then you wake up, and stay in your bed.->Recur]]]

(click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[You wake up. It is raining.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[It's 12pm.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[You were dreaming again.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[[[Wake up.->Wake Up]] [[Go to sleep->Trapped]]]

(text-colour:black)[You wake up.](enchant:?page,(bg:(hsl:60,0.8039,0.5,0.3)))

You go back to sleep. (enchant:?page,(bg:(hsl:240,0.8039,0.5,0.65)))

(enchant:?page,(text-colour:magenta))(click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[Your group filters out through security one at a time. Most go ahead of the cart, simply passing through the check with a nod to the personnel. The cart has to be checked. The logic of why the cart is //leaving// the party with racks full of pastries, why it needs to be checked, is not questioned. The cart is being checked.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[A woman in a pantsuit picks up cookies and examines them, then sets them back on the cart. She notices you hovering watching the exchange, and gives you an odd look, so you smile nervously and pass through the checkpoint, waiting as subtly as you can for your friend with the cart.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[Eventually the cart passes inspection, and you are allowed to go. You celebrate with your co-conspirators for getting whatever-it-is out of the party, for whatever important reasons you certainly have.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[You wheel it down a hall and come to a set of stairs, an unusual one built of square-shaped steps that look like flat couch cushions, the steps hanging in the air with no support besides each other. Your group has to carefully navigate this cart down the steps before you succeed, some going down first and lowering it step by step, some supporting from behind.] (click:?page)+(t8n:"blur")[You get the cart down safely, and the dream ends.] (t8n-depart:"blur")+(t8n-arrive:"blur")(click-goto:?page,"Sleep")