Insomnia

I’ve always been a bad sleeper. When I’ve hit my REM cycle and am far away in dreamland, things are frickin’ peachy. That’s not the issue. It’s the winding down, drifting off, corralling the cobwebs in the mind that I struggle with. Everything we came to count on in our world was completely thrown off its axis this past year. In the same tradition, my small improvements in learning how to sleep were dropkicked out of a 10-story building; just like what your ex did to your collection of Sheryl Crow CDs.

I’ve tried switching positions, which may work for people trying to spice things up, but not for someone who’s trying to simmer down. Every position is uncomfortable, I’m either ready to ignite or so cold I can see my breath; I end up traveling across the mattress and wiggling around like Free fucking Willy. I’ve tried the spread-eagle, Jesus-on-the-cross style, fetal position, pillows surrounding me like a crime scene chalk outline, blankets off, blankets on, blankets twirled up around my legs like yakisoba on a chopstick. I have about a 70% success rate with sleeping face down, which is promising in the short-term, but by the time I reach my thirtieth birthday I’m going to be sporting a labyrinth of wrinkles deeper than Olive Garden’s bottomless breadstick baskets.

I know I sabotage my sleep schedule. My innocent self desperately longs to lay militantly still until sleep creeps up on me, but before I know it, my shadow self reaches its hand for my phone and scrolls through Instagram until I’m down a rabbit hole of Magic Mike: Live in Vegas videos.

There are times, however, when tv actually helps. Videos of bartenders muddling cocktails sends me into a euphoric trance that lilts me gently into dreamland. You’ll think twice about calling me a lush when you listen to the rich sound of thick liquor sliding out of the bottle, ice cubes clinking against a highball glass, fracturing after hitting the alcohol, a spoon stirring slow and sultry, the hissing of a martini shaker that mimics the percussion of a maraca, the voice of the bartender uttering the most comforting three words in the English language: “on the rocks”. It’s like ASMR for alcoholics and its glorious.

X-Files is exquisitely dull enough to aid me in falling asleep. The dimly lit offices and late-night stakeouts coupled with Mulder’s monotone and Scully’s rich, soothing voice send me into a state of complete relaxation and detachment. I’m really set if I throw in a capsule of melatonin before an episode. After 20 minutes I’m out cold, but surprise, surprise, I wake up 13 hours later looking and feeling like a severely hungover Gary Busey. I just can’t win.

To make matters worse, I recently moved in with roommates who are big fans of white noise. They constantly have the tv and radio on during the day, which doesn’t bother me as much as the Dr. Seuss contraption they leave on at night. This sleep machine sounds more like Howl’s Moving Castle skateboarding on sandpaper than it does an ocean wave. But wait! When I finally get to sleep at 6 am, fifteen minutes later I wake to the annoyingly chipper melodies of Taylor Swift and the thudding of feet on a Peloton. I can forgive the exercising; gyms are closed. But listening to Taylor Swift should be considered a felony.

It might sound silly, but my pajamas play a crucial role during bedtime. I have to be just right from head to toe, or things will get bad quickly. First, I tie my crazy hair up in a tight topknot so stray hairs have no chance of doing the Scooby-Doo creep down my face and tickling my nose. I wear a lightweight, breathable T-shirt, preferably with something like a skeleton enjoying a cigar on it, loose underwear and ankle socks. The socks always come off in the middle of the night, but I heard from an Instagram doctor that people who wear socks fall asleep faster. And how can I forget my fuzzy eye mask? It provides ample light-blockage and cradles my eyes beautifully, but occasionally, it launches little fuzz particles straight into my nasal canal while also slowly slithering up my face through out the night, tangling itself up in my hair so aggressively, I have to whip out my pruning shears to cut myself free in the morning.

And to top it all off, there's the mental noise swirling around up there. On the rare occasion I find myself in a comfortable position, my little smile of relief and success is thwarted by the memory of Prom 2014 that slides into my consciousness like Kramer through Jerry Seinfeld’s doorway. As hard as I try to squint the memory away, I have to witness myself careening down the gazebo staircase, dress hiked up and covered in pink lemonade, again and again and again until I replace it with an even worse moment from my past. Like an awkward blind date with a kite surfer who, an hour into the date, asked me what time it was and followed that up with a “That’s probably good enough.”

I start rolling around, overthinking everything, wondering how I’m going to fuck up my job interview the next day, questioning whether I’m contributing enough goodness to the world, then worrying about my sister holding up a sign outside of the police station, about my grandparents walking into a grocery store, about the suffering plaguing the planet. I pull on my sheets and think about how I’m going to fall asleep tomorrow, how anyone can sleep well right now.

And without me knowing, at some indiscernible time of the night, a strange thing happens. I get pulled somewhere far, far away. Sleep comes upon me like it always does; slowly then all at once. No matter how chaos-ridden my mental state is, at some point I always waft away like jasmine on a balmy midnight breeze. I never remember those intangible few seconds suspended between drifting and falling asleep. My consciousness wanes like sand filtering through my fingers. The next thing I know, I’m squinting at the sunlight peeking through the blinds, trying to recall how I finally drifted off.

And then I realize, like most things, that it’s out of my control. I can wear the right pajamas, position myself perfectly, listen to a mixologist make the perfect Old Fashioned, manage every tiny little detail possible, but in the end, things operate on their own clock. They sneak up on you and you lose sight of how you got there.

There are things way bigger than us, bigger than our fears, our worries or our insomnia. They come and go as they please, but nothing ever stays the same. I think, now more than ever, we are all coming to terms with that notion. Accepting that won’t help me start snoring as soon as my head hits the pillow, but it’ll remind me that eventually, if we keep moving forward, somewhere down the line, things will change.

Just like waking from a deep sleep, at some point during this overwhelming time we find ourselves in, we’ll open our eyes and see the sun again.

And when that day comes, feel free to play Taylor Swift as loud as you want.