A Tale of Two Hamsters...

Inside my brain, there are two hamsters. One runs in its wheel on the left, the other runs on the right. Sometimes, they cooperate and synchronise. Most of the time they are trying to eat each other.

In situations of high stimulus I can feel the hamsters running wild. Tiny claws pitter-pattering over my frontal lobe, sharp buck-teeth snapping as the two come into contact. Meanwhile, circus music plays. The tempo increases and the hamsters have gone superspeed, whirling around and around and hey at least they're back in their wheels now! So everything runs as it should, right?

Oh sorry, did you just ask me a question? Give me a moment. Uh...

At night there is an unemployed, melancholy goblin that takes up the controls. Imagine the front desk from Inside Out, with a panel of buttons and emotions all conferring pleasantly. Behind that desk sits the goblin, with one mission: do not let this man sleep.

Dirty grey skin folds into wrinkles around its paunch as the goblin pulls a lever. With a controlled shock, the left hamster is activated, but due to its drowsiness it starts trotting backwards, tripping over the blue ruts in the wheel as it slowly wakes up. The goblin sees this and rubs its hands with glee, flicking the next switch with a little bit more vigour.

The right hamster awakes but is not fuelled by lethargy. The rightmost hamster is buzzing with barely contained rodent rage. But who to turn it on? Where can one small, mental mammal express its frustrations?

Ah yes. The left hamster.

I stare at the ceiling in the dark and wish I could smack the sides of my head until the hamsters die. My boyfriend says that's not a good thing to do, though. Something about bruising?

A fluffy war is raging behind my eyes, too vivid and too energetic to allow me to escape to dreamland. Anytime my mind wanders towards sleeping tactics (breathe deeply, don't move your body, hold the stuffed Ikea shark closely) the goblin reaches for the final switch. The most dangerous of them all.

Imagination activated.

Trapped by the confines of the duvet, fizzing with barely contained hyperactivity, the hamsters pull up a whiteboard and start brainstorming article ideas. Nations go to war only to be halted by a loving prince, a play is written and scrapped within seconds and the whole time, the hamsters are still trying to chew the whiteboard pens.

The goblin puts its feet up, exposing the blackened soles to the hamsters. It yawns. A job well done. This poor sod won't sleep for another two hours. Tablets won't help - not until he fills out those forms, anyway.

(The hamsters start planning how to fill out the forms without ever having seen them.)

Inside my head there are two hamsters, and I wish more than anything I could control them. There are sometimes positives to the hamsters, though; I'm told I'm quite creative. Even the goblin has its perks! I see the stars more than the average human, and I've learned how to do an excellent impression of a rotisserie chicken while spinning in my bed trying to sleep.

For now, the hamsters are sleeping and the goblin has not yet crawled out of its pit. This is what I like to call 'the productive time'. It exists fleetingly, is often dependent on the weather, and relies far too heavily on caffeine. It is within this time that I can breathe, with a mostly quiet mind, and get my studies done.

Oh wait nevermind there's a third hamster, it has maracas and is singing all of High School Musical.

Fuck.