Insomnia

Something you don't think too much of gets taken away and it leaves you living a completely different life.

Sleep is sometimes something that doesn't come easy for me. Sometimes.

I'm a cyclical insomniac, which means that every couple of months I go through a period of sleeplessness that spans from a few weeks to a month, total sleep deprivation is usually 2-4 days per cycle, my personal record is either 5 or 6. I can't remember which, I'll get to that as we go along.

A couple weeks ago I saw the grateful end to my most relentless cycle yet, and I've had this s**t since I was around 12 so that's saying something. I've only just properly recovered from it and now the cycle's on me again, I've typed this and the last two submissions in one night and it's now 3:30am. No rest for the wicked, I suppose.

I have to get ready for college at 6am and leave my house at 7am, I'll spend around 12 hours at that point away from my house, my bed and any hope of a small nap. Not that I'm complaining, at least this way I'll actually get there on time instead of waking up at 7am and arriving about an hour late. This way I'm always ready.

It comes to a point when you're standing around your friends while they're saying "Oh, I feel like s**t! I only had 6 hours sleep last night!" and I usually retort with "I managed 3 hours last night, I'm so happy!", that shuts them up. Well, not really unless I talk to them on a regular basis and they'll understand. But if I don't talk to them much and they sound surprised at my happiness over what they think is an abysmal amount of sleep then I get the barrage of questions.

"Are you not tired?!"

"How do you manage it?!"

"Do you have insomnia?"

"Are you medicated?"

I feel like a victim or an attention seeker when I have to explain that I have cyclical insomnia and that it comes and goes. Especially when the tutors ask why I'm so late sometimes, leaving early is one advantage but the fact you slip into a trance or fall asleep on the bus and it goes past your stop kind of evens it out, I have to explain the trances and the outbursts of irritability. A tutor offered me help, to talk to someone about my problem after I inadvertently snapped at her after I stepped outside of class for a cigarette after the noises and bright lights in the room became too much, at that point I felt like they're thinking I'm using a sleep disorder as an excuse. Although I'm very grateful to her for taking my outburst with a caring smile, I still felt like she was implying insomnia made me a sub-par human, like it was a disability or an illness that needed to be sympathized with and that I needed to be molly-coddled.

I guess I should explain how insomnia affects you to those who are reading this and have probably thought "What the f**k is this guy talking about?!", that's if they haven't clicked away by now.

A good starting reference for how Insomnia affects you would be the book/movie Fight Club. I does leave you in a dream-like trance, but it's not that nothing feels real, it's more...everything feels disconnected from you. You're aware it's there but you personally cannot interact with it, even if it's interacting with you. But that's usually after the second night of total deprivation for me.

After the first night you just feel completely shattered, but somehow, paradoxically, energised. You can get up and walk around, even run around and shout your lungs out of your throat, but as soon as your a*s is on a seat for too long the eyes are drooping and the room is tilting and you can do nothing about it until you get back up. There's almost no lethargy.

The day after the second night is when dissociation kicks in, everything becomes detached, then amplified, then detached, and so on. Sounds become muffled until that one burst of sudden volume that snaps you back to earth, you've probably felt it yourself when falling asleep in front of the TV. When you're nodding off then suddenly the TV sounds like it's been turned full volume and you snap awake again. It's like that, except all the time, you can't just turn off the TV and call it a night, not an insomniac. Textures feel amplified to your sense of touch, almost as if you're concentrating on the exact details of the bumps, the smoothness, whatever the texture it is you're touching. You become a little irritable when faced with complex interaction rather than a simple hello, your head can't handle keeping up with social elements for too long before you want to be away from the conversation.

The third night without sleep is about the same, except more intense, sounds become even more amplified, you doze off more, slip into trances easily, more irritability which could lead to outbursts, especially with confrontation (it was at this level I snapped at my tutor). The only notable difference is that your sense of touch takes a U-turn, instead of feeling every contour of a texture, the texture seems to feel dull and thick, almost as if you've grown a second layer of skin over your fingers, adds to the dissociation.

The fourth and fifth night without sleep is where the hallucinations, delirium and true dissociation begins. And oh, boy do they come down hard! Almost every sense has been nullified, you're in waking dream mode, pretty much. Your eyes shifting and moving constantly, a waking REM sleep that brings no relief, at least there no amplification this time, that was annoying. I've ended up trying to join a conversation to try and snap back to reality only to get weird looks and realise I suddenly blurted out something so different, not only that but so SURREAL to what they're saying. That's when people start to worry, they notice the bags under the eyes, their droopiness, the slouch, you basically look like you've just smoked an ounce of weed to yourself and followed it up with a few tabs of acid, and that's what it feels like.

For the hallucinations I always see the two same things among the random chaos, a red fog under my feet that sometimes stretches outwards and a strange thing on my shoulder that takes up less and less form the longer I look at it, the edges blur and the colours fade, not just on the strange thing but the world as well, but not too bad as to not recognise where I am. your sense of time itself becomes blurred, you don't know whether a few minutes, hours or even an entire night has passed, in the same sense when you aren't quite sure what day it is. Everything is on autopilot here, you're just treading through the day so you can get home and collapse on your bed and sleep for 18 hours. And what a glorious sleep it is!

What do I do when I'm having a sleepless night? I write. I write songs, make tracks on my computer and I write this so I can have something to do instead of doing the things I should be doing. I write up structures for songs that'll more than likely never exist. But I like that. Every now and then there's a song that gains form and breathes life. That's a good feeling, worth going through masses of rejected ideas that has some potential but never gets a proper form. It's worth staying up all night for that little moment of accomplishment after a long, long night.

You know, I like my insomnia. It deteriorates my health and it makes me lose focus on the outside world, but that focus goes inwards. You look into yourself and see who you are, a lot of your time at night is spent thinking, whether it's while lying awake in bed or writing long-winded s**t on a Writer's website. And you end up meeting yourself and sometimes, he's a pretty cool guy. A little rough around the edges, but he has a set goal in life, discovered thanks to his insomnia.

As much as I'm grateful that people sympathize and that my tutor offered me help for it, I'm sticking with this "disorder", it's damaging my body but it's replenishing my being (I really don't want to use the word "soul").

I'm keeping my insomnia as a little part of me, and you know what? I hope it stays.

Reviews

[Quexycyclops]

This is... whoa. I do not doubt you either. Difference is truly the spice of life, and sometimes our imperfections are what makes it worth being us. I actually stayed up all night, for the hell of it. I am already in the surreal, but to imagine days without sleep I cannot. The reference to Fight Club sparked a memory. I recall watching the movie, thinking to myself that surely such people do not exist. Very interesting read, sir. I could contemplate over this piece and the many, varying implications that could be drawn from it for some time. Worthwhile read, I shall be reading more of you in the future.

[Shannen Forrester]

I to am a card carrying insomniac and I was sitting here smiling and nodding along with everything you had written, I think you must be my long lost brother or something. Well written enjoyable and interesting read, I look forward to your future work :)