I
haven't slept in three days. Not really slept anyway. I've gone to
bed, but despite the fact that I'm exhausted and my entire face hurts
from the effort of holding my eyes open, I can't slow my brain down
enough to switch it off. This happens to me occasionally, as I'm sure
it does to everyone. There are few things more frustrating than being
drop-dead tired but unable to put your body to rest.
Yesterday
I tried to compensate for my exhaustion with a natural supplement.
Namely, caffeine. Before my 10 am work shift at Barnes and Noble (and
after my 6:15 am work shift at FedEx), I bought myself a grande iced
coffee from the B&N cafe. It was well-intended but may not have
been the best choice. I think there comes a point of
tiredness---especially for infrequent consumers like myself---where
caffeine ceases to increase energy level and serves only to induce a
kind of rapid-fire anxiety. My heart rate sky-rocketed; you'd think I
were a murderer lying on a polygraph test, not a cashier working in a
quiet bookstore, judging by the way my body was reacting. I really
thought I might faint or black out. Simple tasks like counting change
held all the nervosity of a high-stakes rescue operation. I'm not
sure I'll try that one again.
Sleep
deprivation and anxiety are never a fun combination, even without the
added stimulus of caffeine. They often feed into each
other, until it becomes nearly impossible to solve one without first
solving the other. I don't sleep well, therefore I am anxious about
my lack of sleep. I am anxious, therefore I don't sleep. It's a
vicious cycle, and one with which I'm all-too familiar.
Strange
thoughts dart in those twilight moments between consciousness and
dreaming. Unarticulated fears, scene flashes from my day, fabricated
images (such as me eating milkshakes in the mall, something which has
not happened ever to my knowledge and yet which I caught myself
thinking about the other night). I sat up in a panic several times
last night convinced I had overslept my alarm, only to discover that
it was only 1 am, 3 am, or 4 am. Time moves at an inconstant rate:
though I feel my mind has never stopped whirling, somehow several
hours pass in the course of 20 minutes. Restless black waters engulf
my head.
It is
at times like these that I think of the lake. It is high in the
mountains, in a small green valley dotted with white boulders. The
water in the lake is warm, and though swimmers are refreshed by it,
they never catch a chill. I am alone in the valley, floating on my
back in the lake. The blue sky above me is very still, and there is
not a sound besides the slight rippling of the waves. Though I put
little effort into my strokes, my body stays buoyant, like how I
imagine it would in the Dead Sea, except this water is fresh and
clear.
It
is not quite accurate to say I am alone. Though I feel the total
comfort one can only feel alone with one's own body, I also sense the
presence of others---or another. It is both singular and multiple. I
cannot see them, but I feel them hovering over me, filling the whole
valley with their presence. I feel at once totally free, spreading my
bare arms in the water around me, and totally safe, like a child
tucked into a warm bed. I feel peace.
During
the nights when I can't sleep, when I can't shut off my mind, I force
myself to think about this scene and only this scene. I put
everything else in a mental folder and place it on a shelf, and tell
myself I can come back to it later. But not now.
This
doesn't always help me sleep, at least not so far. But it does make
me feel a little better and slow my heart rate. When I was having
trouble with insomnia last spring, a friend of mine told me to
imagine a beautiful place and then explore it. This is my own version
of her advice.
(written Wednesday, December 12th)
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