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inane annals
I Feel Swimmingly
by MrhL | 13 Nov 2007, 2:27

I was taking a nap in Astronomy today and I accidentally missed the whole damn class. I wasn't trying to, but it was 9:30 am and I had been up for eight hours after two hours of sleep, if that. I wasn't trying to stay awake, I just was. I don't remember when this problem started; I should say, I don't remember not having this problem. I've had sleeping pills for seven years now, but they come with their own problems. Sometimes they don't work too well, and then I find myself in the emergency room at 5 am getting stitches in my forehead with no idea as to how I got there. Fell down the stairs after getting a glass of water, I later discovered. So, I have trouble sleeping. I've tried to combat it but, as a product of my generation, these efforts have primarily been in the realm of chemical indulgence/dependence, prescribed or otherwise.

Like I said, I don't know when this started but I guess it came with puberty, as that's when most problems manifest themselves, don't they? I know this: when I was 16, at the insistence of my mom (who is still medicated and doing quite well) and my friend Paige (who has given up on doctors and pills and is doing quite well), I saw a psychiatrist and was diagnosed bi-polar. Among the medications for this disorienting malady came a sweet little pill named Sonata. The other bi-polar meds have changed over the years, but the Sonata stayed consistent for a long time. At first it helped. It helped a lot, actually. At night I would get into bed, take one or two, and read for twenty to thirty minutes. When the words began to drift off the page, I knew it was time to drift off to sleep.

I was doing really well on Depecote (Valporic Acid) at the beginning and everything. I had an awesome girlfriend. She Naired my back hair when I turned 17. The first time she came over was after I told her I wouldn't be helping with our group project, having just been expelled. She had to come over because I was under house arrest. But I digress. The point is, I was very content at that time.

So a year passed. I was fucking miserable at school, feeling like a bit of an outcast at the private Christian school I was transferred to. The awesome girlfriend and I had broken up, though not on bad terms or anything. Also, my white blood cell count was plunging rapidly due to the Valporic Acid. Despite my severe discomfort around needles, I was getting my blood checked on a weekly basis, hoping that it would begin to rise so I could avoid a bone marrow biopsy. I also started hanging out around the University of North Texas with students of various degrees. Beat fanatics, all of them. Among them, I met the girl that I took to my junior prom. She was a junior, too—only in college. I should have known that the five year difference would cause problems, but I was 17 and in love, so I guess I ignored this.

The Christian school was driving me crazy and she got the brunt of it, but that's just a convenient excuse. Night would come around and I would be thinking—obsessing—over some argument earlier in the day, something like "I had sex with ** by the way." It really bothered me, then, how easily she'd dismiss it, though I think these days I'd dismiss it just as easily. So I'd take my pills and play Snake on my phone until my score started dropping and I noticed something: for the first time in the day I felt "happy." The walls would start drifting around and I would lay awake watching them. I've still got notebooks filled with lunatic rants from this time, rants I sometimes called and lambasted her with. I look at them now with mixed feelings, but that's a topic for another day. The topic of today is that the sleeping pills did more for my mood than whatever else I was taking (or not taking) and they were always waiting for me at the end of the day. My four hours of contentment—oh joy of joys.

A year later I was a senior in high school and still fucking miserable, or more so. It's not easy being a nihilist at a Christian school, but somehow none of the teachers noticed. They didn't seem to notice much about me. And my friends had started to drift away. Some internal drama drove one guy from the group and I followed him, being just as miserable as he was, for basically the same reason—that reason being a girl. He was pretty understanding about his situation and dealt with it the only way he knew how.

He didn't lead me to drink; he didn't encourage an addiction. We were both pretty wrapped up in our own pain and about all the other had in the way of friends, so we got drunk a lot. I mean a lot. We'd binge drink four or five nights a week. I'd stumble into class still dressing, obviously hung over. I wouldn't shower for days because I crashed at my friend's house so frequently. (But I'd always take a quick shower and a bath on Sunday, at home. And I wouldn't drain the water. That way, when by chance I did wake up at home mid-week, I could just dunk my head into the cold water to get me going like quick.) At least I wasn't driving home at 4 am after consuming a bottle of liquor—vodka, whiskey and Jagermeister being our shots of choice, and we only drank shots. We only drank doubles, and we chased each one with another pair.

Now that I had alcohol, I wasn't using the Sonata for sleep as much. Which means it was free for recreational purposes. "Take drugs seriously," I'd say ambiguously to myself. "Recreation, or Re-creation." "Self-destruction is Salvation," I'd say to myself. Oh joy of joys—I'd walk through a day singing Sinatra, feeling absolutely swimmingly.

I'd have conversations with a singing, dancing cactus next to my bed. I'd ask if I should take another and he would do his dance, only instead of saying "Tequila," he'd say "Oh yeah." I'd run out before I could get it refilled, which meant sleepless nights. I broke down one Monday: I got out of bed, looked at my uniform, and got back into bed for a little over a week. No one at school even asked where I had been. No one.

Mixing pills with the 6 o'clock traffic into Dallas to catch a flick was probably the most irresponsible thing I've ever done... habitually.

So fast forward a couple of years—hell, that's what I did. I moved back home, having left school. I've tried to give up drinking but I can't really sleep without it. I don't know if you can really call it "sleep" when you pass out. Sonata pretty much can't put me asleep anymore. I've tried other things: Seraquil, Lunesta, Ambien, etc. They'd make impressive-sounding assertions about being active for six to eight hours. I'd sleep for maybe three but, afterward, couldn't really get out of bed, like my body was dead or something. The world is pretty lonely at 3 am, anyway. Few are still up and fewer are up for work yet. I learned that while working the night shift at a gas station the year before. It was the only hour I could get away from the register long enough to empty all 11 outdoor garbage bins. But I digress. These days, I can often be found "lying awake all night consumed by grief and guilt," not to sound melodramatic, but can you really talk about your problems otherwise? I watch the minutes go slowly by, waiting for 4, for 5, for 6. Around 8 I might start drifting, but by then it's time to get up and the alarm clock gives me a big "Fuck you."

I gave up on sleeping pills for a while. I had a prescription to Lunesta that I waited a long time to fill. When I ran out of it after 15 days (they only give you thirty) and tried to refill it, they told me they couldn't for so many days because it was, despite what the commercials tell you, habit forming. What isn't? I've been trying to quit smoking cigarettes for over a year now, and question what other bad habits I could break. I'd like natural sleep—more than anything, I wish I could fall asleep on my own. Fall asleep and dream. Pills don't let you dream. Neither do pot or alcohol. So what's the solution? Guided imagery therapy? Herbal and vitamin supplements? Exercise?, or maybe exorcise, as in the various demons I've hidden in the closet, under my bed or in plain sight. Maybe if I stopped drinking, maybe if I started meditating. But I have such a hard time silencing that damn brain of mine. I think it's in rebellion for all the pain I've caused it. And this could go on and on, turning into a rant that I really don't know where to end.

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