I have a sleep disorder. It goes with the chronic illness territory. The older I get the more I hear that it's a sign or symptom or side-effect of...being alive, basically. Pretty much anything gets you some mangled sleep, in the form of Narcolepsy (falling asleep in front of DEA agents) and Central Sleep Apnea (sleeping while on mass transit) and Circadian Rhythm Disruption Disorder (which has something to do with birds. Maybe they roost on you just when you're drifting off. That's just a guess: I'm no clinician.)
In any case, there you are, lucky you- you have a sleep disorder, primary or secondary to something else that's wrong. So you're sleepy all the damn time. And you get sleepy during the worst, the absolute worst, times, such as when you're behind the wheel, driving to the biggest town in the area because you can't walk to the optician who is fifteen miles away, and also when you're having sex. It makes no sense because there you are, in the moment, driving whilst singing along to your Queen's Greatest Hits. Your teenage daughter is next to you, not listening with purpose in that special way that teenagers have, as if their Sarcasm Force creates a bubble around them and sounds bounce away, intimidated. Then your eyes start to close- they just close, slowly, your eyelids falling rather than drifting downward. It's horrifying. You swerve just to wake yourself up, just to shake a little fear into your own head, which is something you'd never expected to have to do: being in control of that many pounds of rolling metal and plastic was scary enough, especially when you factor in all the other people in charge of their own rolling, rattling sarcophoguses. (Sarcophogi? Sarcaphogium?) You may be "a little tired," but those people are maniacs! The remaining drive is fraught, slow, and very obnoxious: by the time you finally pull over, there are 37 people behind you because you were going seventeen miles an hour and they couldn't pass because there was always a tractor in the other lane. Always. You just wave to them, one by one, smiling through a closed mouth because every one who passes you has their finger sticking up. Sometimes they showed two.
I've done some research about how to deal with Excessive Daytime Sleepiness, as it's called, and it always comes down to this: I should simply Get More Sleep at Night!! I can't really fathom how advice this stupid can be perpetrated across the interwebs, but then again this is the same mode of communication that allows terrible video of neighborhood dumbasses raping local girls to play over and over until enough people use the hashtag #ComeOnWithTheRapeVideoIMeanCantWeJustConvictThoseShitheadsAlready, and it gets taken off. Until the next one. So I shouldn't be surprised, is my point. But continuing on, these l'il reports and whatnot always shovel out the same bullet points, to whit:
*Are You Getting Enough Exercise? Listen, I walk a few miles every day, and that's on a light day- other days I walk lots of miles and/or swim some laps. This is no guarantee; yet the l'il report treats the exhortation as if it were made of some gold-like substance that leaps from your notebook's page directly into your eyeballs and come bedtime, you'll snuggle down into your own magic sleep cuccoon and in 8 hours you'll be as well-rested as a mountain bear in April...as long as I get nice and sweaty first.
Except it doesn't work.
* Are You Taking One Weensy Little 20-Minute Nap Sometime Before Noon and then Not Napping At All? When you have some serious sleep disorder issues, the whole nap question becomes almost academic: there's no way you CAN'T nap. All I have to do is be in some daily situation where things slow a little, like 4:30. That's a pretty low-key time of day, generally. Everyone needs a nice sit-down and cup of something warm come the late afternoon, and yet I need to stamp around and yell and generally act like a private in boot camp at 4:30 AM, ordered by my own self to GET UP, MAGGOT and DO FIFTY THOUSAND PUSH-UPS RIGHT NOW OR I'LL BE SCRUBBING THE KITCHEN FLOOR WITH MY OWN UGLY FACE. I mean this literally. I've been known to lie down on the kitchen floor- just for a second, I just need a tiny rest- and wake up twenty minutes later with the drool on my face bonded with the muddy paw prints and general ick on the floor. I really wish that the l'il reports would stop referring to Naptime as if it were entirely voluntary!
*Are You Getting Enough Sunlight?
.....What?
I Live in England, so the short answer is: No. Not really, and thanks for mentioning it. Unless it's summer, in which case the answer is Yes. Far too much of it, and thanks for mentioning it. This bit of advice is just cruel: if I could get enough sunlight, I'd be getting it, motherfucker. It's a taunt, and it's also insulting, as if I'm just too box-of-hair stupid to figure out that going outside occasionally is good for you and if you don't do it you might not feel great. It's also generic, because it's the same tidbit that gets sprayed around when you're foolish enough to ask the WWW why you're sad, or fat, or homeless. I don't know for a fact that the homeless are instructed to make sure they get 20 minutes of quality sunshine daily, but I'd be very willing to bet on it. I can just see the homeless person in question, sitting in front of the library's computer that they've been waiting for for five hours, typing in a search for local housing council contact information and getting a hit reading "20minutes (or more!) A Day of Vitamin D-Rich Sunshine can Allay Your Habitation Quandary!"
*Stop Worrying!
.....What??
Ok, it's a legitimate point. You just lay there and worry about sleeping, which makes you less likely to sleep. But to tell someone to stop worrying is like telling your teenager to stop thinking about sex, or your five-year-old to not concern themselves with the fanged, five-legged monster under their bed and just close their eyes. Plus- and this is less tangible, but it's true for me and therefore true for everyone, of course- we wants it. We wants our precious worry, petss. It makes us happy to let our little minds go in circles and to think up riddles for nasty landlordses when asked where our rents is, precious; and we wants to build up a rant in our skulls for the nass-ty SUV driver lady at the school drop-off who takes up two lanes on morningses, making everyone late, preciouss...I really think there's an addictive quality to worrying and that our current first-world culture places value on fretting about forty-eight things at once. Telling an insomniac to stop worrying is just more grist for the mill: you can easily fret about why you can't stop fretting. I've done it. It's one of my Top Five Bullshit Things to Think About Instead of Sleep, in fact. A normal night inside my head goes very much like this:
----ok i can sleep, i'm pretty sure that's sleepiness right there when my arm sort of jumped by itself a little, which is weird, i get the discharge of nervous energy stuff but what has that got to do with my left arm, ok the arm doesn't matter, i can just unwind now, whatever that is- it always made me think of water swirling down the drain, similar to unwinding but not similar enough, you know? Why can't i just think of things that unwind, why does my brain come up with inadequate similes, it might as well be dementia--oh god i may have early onset dementia--i'll have to make an appointment tomorrow, and also i need to stop worrying. They have mri's now that can take down the actual contents of your breakfast if you're even in the room with them so i'll get that somehow even though there's no one i know or can trust, crap i must be the worst friend, just the crappiest person to be around- i have to stop worrying. no one's getting an mri while i'm here in bed making up stupid things to be freaked about, in fact the stuff that i'm making up is really lame and very derivative of something, but i'm too tired to think of what-- some southern alt-punk band, i think- and i can't remember what it is and i have to STOP WORRYING, christ almighty- can't wait to see god when i'm dead so we can hash out this whole no-sleeping policy-----------------------wait that was good, that was sleeping i think, i was getting pictures like dreams but not dreams because i can hear the squirrels in the roof while i'm lying here but my point was that there were pictures. there was some celebrity, someone cute, second teir- jason bateman?- holding up an animated raccoon and talking about his next project, and i was going to say something about how that would be a bad idea, jason, you should really concentrate on smaller independent pictures with something legitimate to say about raccoons instead, it would give your career some much needed gravitas--. am i sleeping yet? was that sleeping? shit it was not sleeping it's just lazy advising to someone i don't actually know. god i'm getting weirder as i lay here- is that possible? it must be possible. ok i have to just LET IT GO now....now...now...ugh,
etc.
I don't know the answer for my sleep problem, other than take the bus more (don't worry, I will.) The only thing I can think of that this may help is my prospects as a film producer: that pointer for Mr. Bateman sounds like it should be worth something, don't you think? Hollywood, here I come- after a rest. A nice, restorative rest.
