Can’t Sleep

[I'm going to turn this in as a personal narrative for my English Comp class. Thoughts?]

I give up.

It’s three forty six in the A.M. and I’ve been laying sleepless in my bed since a little after one. So, here I am, sitting on the couch, watching an episode of Mad Men and eating shortbread Girl Scout cookies.

This has been happening more and more lately, this not-sleeping-at-night thing. It started out a few months ago, after I lost my job. Lost my job; I hate that phrase, as though I lost my job like it were a set of car keys. I got laid off, and it really shook me, hence the sleepless nights for most of September. I’d spend the wee hours reading a book, or surfing around the web reading news and discovering new blogs and writers, then usually pass out around four or five.

But, as I settled down and came to terms with my new role, or lack thereof, in life I started sleeping more soundly. It might have been that I was staying out until two, then sleeping till noon and keeping my days full in between, but I slept soundly for months. I was working hard, playing harder and filling the time between with school and its corresponding work.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I just couldn’t fall asleep. I have no idea when or why that first sleepless night happened, but I do remember laying in bed, listening to the BBC on my radio and wondering why I was still awake at four in the morning. It wasn’t that I wasn’t tired; my body was exhausted but my brain was wide awake. I wondered and stressed and thought about it until I eventually woke up around two the next afternoon.

I knew, right then, that I wasn’t going to sleep that night either. It’s two in the afternoon, I thought, in twelve hours it’ll be two in the morning, and there’s no way I’ll be tired enough by then to sleep a whole night. I know my body better than that.

However, I also know my body’s weaknesses. I know that I can make myself fall asleep for almost exactly sixty minutes if I lay down on the couch after a meal. I know that I will wake up, after said nap, and be able to go another 18 hours without sleep. So, I concocted a plan to fool my body.

That day, or the remainder of it anyway, I went full throttle, trying to wear myself out. I also went to Kroger and picked up some sleeping pills. I went out that night with some friends, closed whatever bar we were at and got home around 2:30. I cooked myself a big bowl of rigatoni and served it up with a side of store-brand Nite Time Sleep Aid. I placed myself on the couch, put a movie in the player and chowed down on a late night dinner.

I woke up the next morning, still in my jeans and t-shirt, around ten. Pleased with myself, I enacted the second phase of my plan. I went about a normal day and got home from whatever it was around eight. I made dinner, with the same double serving of sleeping pills as a chaser. I lay on the couch and watched TV, waiting to fall asleep. This time I woke up, wearing shorts and a hoodie, around three in the morning. My plan had backfired, I hadn’t slept long enough. But I was wide awake, and there was no way I was going to fall back into a slumber.

So, I stayed awake. I watched some TV, read a book, and stressed about my inability to reach dreamland.

The sleepless nights have continued like that, sporadically, ever since. Some nights I’ll hit the hay at one-thirty and sleep like a proverbial baby. Other nights, I’ll turn in at eleven and lay in bed until 3, listening to the BBC on my radio, until I finally get up and take a sleeping pill. Either way, it’s frustrating as all hell. I’d rather not sleep at all than sleep some nights and not others or worse yet: than fall asleep at an ungodly hour and wake up midway through the next afternoon.

The hours of literally laying in wait for sleep to come are the most tormenting I’ve ever experienced. My mind races, my thoughts wonder, and I can’t focus on anything but the fact that I’m not asleep. And it’s obviously not getting any better: here I am, at 3:46 A.M., watching and episode of Mad Men and eating shortbread Girl Scout cookies.