Whenever I hear this song, I think back to the days just after I’d returned to my country from a three-week trip. Those were days of rare peace. Despite all that had happened in the months before, and all that was still to come, I felt a quiet stillness within myself.
I remember waking up that morning not too early, not too late. For once, I had time just for myself, as Mochi and Miso were no longer living with me then. As usual, I brewed a V60 pour-over coffee and put on my familiar playlist. Among the old songs, there was a new one I’d just added: “I Can’t Sleep Anymore.” I didn’t know what the artist meant by those melodies, but to me they carried a strange mix: fulfilment laced with regret, a nervous excitement for whatever lay ahead. And that was exactly how I felt in those last days of June.
It’s difficult to name the emotions that passed through me then. I had just returned from a three-week alone trip to four unfamiliar cities in Australia and New Zealand, where I spent most of my time wandering through cafés, suffering foods, and ending the nights a little too drunk, though happily so. My mother had been gone for less than a month. I still missed her deeply, yet no tears would come. I had just stepped out of a complicated relationship that left me both thrilled and stuck. I already sold my apartment and rented it back for the last three months in Vietnam, yet every time I woke up, I still felt as if it belonged to me, maybe because the walls still echoed with too many memories. I had a decent job that opened many doors, but also cost me dearly in time and energy. I also had my last day in August, yet going to work each day still felt difficult. My family still loved me, yet I found myself wrestling with the weight of loving and being loved by them. I no longer had my dogs with me; losing them was painful, but also a lesson in detachment and letting go. I had achieved much, failed just as often, and still sensed there was so much more to learn and feel from this life.
That was when I realised I “couldn’t sleep anymore.” The peace was real, yet beneath it stirred an unnamed urgency, a quiet pull toward something I had not yet discovered. I didn’t know what it was, only that it was waiting for me, and that I would move toward it soon enough.
And so I smiled to myself, holding on to that strange but gentle morning: a moment of stillness and significance I would always recall whenever this song returned to me.
Lam Hà 