#2 - dreaming of sleep

I can’t sleep. Well, I suppose that isn’t entirely true since I am still alive and functioning. More accurately, I can’t sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. Each night I wake up more than half a dozen times and each time I wake up I spend 15-30-60-90+ minutes trying to get back to sleep again. What is keeping me from sleep? It isn’t the erratic rumbling of the mini-fridge, nor the hammering choke of the air-conditioning unit, nor the quality of my mattress—it’s my brain. My brain refuses to shut up. No matter how exhausted I am, it whirrs tirelessly within my head, thinking of storylines, memories, Spider Solitaire, and financial aid papers. These separate entities compete fiercely for my weary attention, jostling back and forth, in and out of the spotlight. They are loud and refuse to be ignored. In addition, my brain insists on translating every thought that flies through my mind, creating an echo chamber of English babble and its bad Persian translation. I have been here for 15 days and have yet to sleep a night.

I expect my brain to explode at any minute or my body to collapse. I am both scared of and fascinated by my condition. I wonder how long this can go on. I wonder if my hair will catch fire. I wonder if I will spontaneously slip into a coma. I wonder if I have discovered some latent superpower within me which allows me to live without rest. I have often wondered what the best superpower would be but now I know that this would be the worst.

I have tried napping, not napping, eating, not eating, caffeine, no caffeine, exercise, showering before bed, reading, writing, studying, and listening to music, but nothing works. My mother suggested beer and my brother Benadryl but I don’t think either is a viable long-term solution for the 6 weeks that remain in the program. I don’t often dream, or rather I remember fewer of them than usual. The other night I had the first silly dream of my life. I held in my hand the red foam apricot-sized ball that had allowed me to fly over the dark city and when it had expanded to the size of a large melon I placed it on my head like a hat. When the villains spotted me hiding in their lair I snatched the foam hat from my head and it promptly shrank back down to its original size. As I frantically whistled the tune necessary to cause it to fly (“Reveille”) I paused briefly to appreciate how ridiculous everything had become. When I awoke I hummed the tune on the way to the bathroom and it filled my head until I finally escaped back into a fitful sleep.

The next morning I giggled to myself uncontrollably over breakfast, goofy with exhaustion. One classmate inquired about my state of mind but I brushed him off. How does one say “whistle” and “foam ball hat” in Persian? I only know how to deny my insanity. A few nights ago I returned to my usual pattern of nightmares and awoke feeling hopeful that things might once again return to normal and I would finally get some sleep. I have learned my lesson—I will appreciate what I once had, even more if I can get it back again. What I wouldn’t give for a full night’s worth of zombie hordes or battlefield atrocity. Here’s to dreaming.

Update: In a desperate attempt to sleep, I resolved to exhaust myself completely, shower and then chug a beer. I did a couple hundred crunches/push-ups/lunges, showered, downed the beer and went to bed. The beer made me sleepy but no dice. I didn’t drop off until a long while after—I stopped looking at the clock after I passed the 90-minute mark—and sleep was fitful. The following morning I awoke sore and tired and that night resigned myself to drugs. A full dose of NyQuil did the trick. As did Benadryl the following night. I don’t like the whole drugging business, but for now I need sleep and it will have to do. I’m relieved that 1) something finally worked, and 2) that it wasn’t the goddamned crunches.