I Don’t Sleep
It’s almost 4 in the morning and here I am typing shit up, despite the fact that I’ve been trying to get to sleep since midnight. This isn’t something new, though; sleep has always taken quite a bit of effort on my part, though I didn’t really notice I had a problem until I started, well, sleeping with other people. I’m pretty jealous of people that lay down and actually go to sleep, without my general routine of tossing and turning for several hours, staring at the ceiling, and thinking of everything on Earth (my girlfriend also claims she doesn’t get any sleep, but she’s generally pretty zonked for most of the night. In fact, I learned tonight she may have “sleep state misperception,” a disorder of sorts in which a person is actually asleep, but awakens thinking they were not). Even if I’m pass-out dead tired, it still takes me a good 30 minutes to fall asleep after actually going to bed. It’s just always worked that way for me.
But tonight seems to be worse than usual — and it happens about once a month — where I get so frustrated with not being able to sleep that I get angry about it, which, of course, doesn’t help matters any. Here’s how it’s gone so far tonight: I laid down for about 30 minutes, wasn’t feeling it, put a skate video on my iPod, watched it in bed, tried falling asleep for another 30 minutes or so, still wasn’t feeling it, so I got up and downloaded some photography podcasts and watched a couple of those on my iPod in bed before trying to doze off one more time.
Of course, this is when I start the goddamn thinking. And it’s not like normal anxiety or anything; I just think of stupid shit. For example, I tried visualizing in my head what a photograph would look like by modifying its curves (as in Photoshop or Lightroom) in different ways, for at least 20 minutes. Then I got the idea that you could look at a really bright crosshair for several minutes, then use the afterimage of it to aim a gun, like a HUD that would disappear after a few minutes. I spent quite a while trying to decide why that wouldn’t work. Logic told me it wouldn’t, but I couldn’t come up with a good reason why not. Then I started thinking that I like how the word unwieldy is difficult to use in normal conversation. Or that the word cumbersome is actually cumbersome, or that the word clunky is actually very clunky. Then I thought it would be funny to put together a politically-motivated concert with a bunch of DJs performing and call it Scratch Resistance. Then I thought it would be funny to start a politically-motivated a capella group called Vocal Minority. Then I thought of all the ways in which I would try to market an orange-flavored energy drink called Agent Orange. You get the idea. And this isn’t out of the ordinary — this is the sort of shit I lie awake and think about every. Fucking. Night. I’ve tried for years to “clear” my mind and focus on nothing to try and sleep, but I invariably get overwhelmed/fascinated with just the concept of thinking of nothing, and it’s enough to keep me up thinking about it all night. No joke.
Strangely, I’ve also been having extremely vivid and terrifying nightmares in the past couple months (about one or two a month), from which I awaken in full-on thrash mode. Three times I’ve actually hit Nina while waking from these dreams (I would have done it this morning, but she had already left for work). This morning’s was one of the most terrifying nightmares I’ve ever had, worsened by the fact that I became conscious of the dream and was actively trying to wake from it for quite a while before finally succeeding in doing so. In the last moments of the dream, followed by the first couple seconds of wakefulness, I was in a complete state of panic/horror that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before. If you must know, in this particular dream I was tricked into entering an enormous compound that existed solely for the purpose of the entertainment of a group of sadistic serial murderers, who in turn existed solely for the production of dead bodies for this old man with a fetish for crawling around on all fours in his compound in the nude and licking dead bodies. There was more to it than that, but a lot of what made it so scary was just emotion and is hard to describe. I haven’t seen any of the Saw or Hostel films, but I imagine it was something like how I imagine those films are. Actually, yeah: Single most terrifying dream I’ve ever had. I don’t even know how my brain comes up with this shit. I just think it’s awesome that when I finally do get to sleep after hours of frustration, there’s about a 1 in 20 chance my brain will come up with the scariest things imaginable, just to make sure my sleep isn’t too effective.
So yeah, there’s a quick wrap-up on my various sleep issues, none of which I’ve ever really discussed before. Maybe it’ll help. And now that it’s almost 5 in the morning and the memory of the creepy body-licking old guy is fresh in my mind, I think I’ll give this another go.
7 Responses to “I Don’t Sleep”
It must be a very unwieldy feeling to wake up after waiting hours to sleep, only to find your self soaked in sweat from having a terrible nightmare.
Man why bother even going to bed, you should take up martial arts. In fact, i have some wooden dojo tokens you can use. I know that karate makes me sleepy, for what it’s worth.
Take up swimming and you will never have problems sleeping again. Or go and skateboard until you puke. That helps too.
Yeah, you know how I learned to sleep well? Work. Get a job bum. Seriously though, if you control your breathing you can slow your heartrate and simulate your body shutting down and “trick” yourself into falling asleep. You also probably need to have sex and drink more, I have 3 months of medical training, I know these things.
Dude, Chris’s’es’ advice about focusing your breathing has helped me fall asleep many a time. It also helps that I’m a raging alcoholic too.
Yeah, even when I’m working and on a regular schedule, I don’t sleep well. In fact, I then have the added anxiety that I’m *not* getting to sleep when I have something important to do the next day. As for sex and drinking — what do you think I do with all my time?
sex is clunky
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