The Battle for Sleep

The most strained relationship in my life is my relationship with sleep. I was the youngest of five kids growing up in a two-bedroom condo. In order to make the most of limited space, my brothers and I slept in bunk beds. Most nights, I spent endless hours staring at the slats of the bunk above me, letting morbid thoughts creep into my mind. What if the bunk bed broke and I ended up impaled on one of those slats? When that got to be too much, I would turn to the wall. The wallpaper was ships at sea and even though the image was always the same, the scenarios I created in my mind were ever-changing. Sometimes I would run my hand over the wallpaper, feeling the bump where my mother plastered over the hole.

Kids fight all the time, sometimes over the dumbest things. One particular fight involved a view-finder that my older brother refused to share. We fussed about it, our discontent echoing through the house. Instead of taking the time to instill in us the importance of sharing, my dad lost his temper and threw the viewfinder into the wall, leaving a fist-sized hole. It was a week before they repaired that hole. Staring at it during the night did not help put my mind at ease. I imagined all kinds of things crawling from that dark maw. My most frequent manifestation involved a giant spider with glowing purple eyes. I didn’t imagine it biting me, but rather coming forth and dragging me through that tiny opening. It would convey me to its web deep inside the walls, leaving me cocooned for later feeding. I was incredibly relieved once the hole was patched, but every now and then, I would feel that bump of plaster and remember that supernatural spider.

One of the things that also made sleeping difficult as a child was my profound fear of the dark. When we were very young, my father had removed the door to our bedroom so that we would not accidentally lock ourselves in the room. When the hall light was on, it wasn’t just some sliver of light through a crack in the door. It was an illuminated portal promising that mom and dad were just a few short steps down the hall. My brothers would often complain about the hall light, that it was keeping them awake. For all their complaining, though, they were snoring away in no time. At some point during the night, my father would switch off the light. I never said anything because I was supposed to be asleep, but once that light was off the darkness became oppressive. I imagined demonic hands reaching from under the bed to pull me down to my doom. Every sound was some nightmare monster coming to crush my bones.

These long, sleepless nights had a profound effect on my waking life, though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time. The familiar refrain from teachers was “He is one of the smartest kids in class, but he doesn’t apply himself.” It was true. I could never focus on what the teacher was saying. When it came time for silent reading, my mind would drift. I would think about the TV shows that I would watch when I got home, wonder what kind of trouble Gilligan would find himself in today. There was nothing more important to me than sitting down to watch my favorite shows. It was a mindless pursuit requiring little focus.

As I grew older, the problem with sleep persisted. I became less afraid of the dark, but I was stuck in a pattern of swirling thoughts. Soon I started focusing on those thoughts. Instead of thinking about all the bad things that could happen, I began to create fantasy scenarios. These scenarios sometimes influenced by my favorite cartoons. Other times, I would create unique narratives. This is what led me to write. I would mull over a story in my mind, and the next day in school, when I should have been focusing on lessons and lectures, I would write down my thoughts. The teachers probably thought I was taking furious notes. While my writing talent grew, my academic career flopped. I coasted by on C’s and D’s. When I finally graduated high school, I was only ten spots away from the bottom of the class.

After high school, I had no direction. I spent hours upon hours writing, but there was no plan to turn that writing into a career. Sometimes my writing sessions would last until 5 am. The next day I would sleep until noon. I think the writing was a means to avoid the battle of sleep. By 5 am, I was so exhausted that I would simply pass out. No thoughts, no obsession, no fears. The few jobs I worked didn’t last very long. Completely directionless at 25, I had a nervous breakdown. I didn’t know what caused my mind to implode the way it did. At least I didn’t know at the time. I began to have full-blown panic attacks that would last a few hours with a long fallout period. I wrestled with something called derealization. I knew the world around me was real, but it didn’t feel real. My perception began to falter. I started to believe that the world around me was of my own construction. I had a profound fear of death because I believed that I had the power to simply shut myself down. Game over. No extra lives.

The next five years were spent visiting different doctors and trying a myriad of anti-depressants. It wasn’t until someone gave me a set of CDs that helped the listener develop coping mechanisms for anxiety that I started to make progress. I realized that I was the architect of my own reality, but not in the sense that I was manifesting the world around me. I had control over my thoughts. The panic attacks, the prolonged periods of derealization, the overwhelming fear of death, all became manageable. This is not to say I was cured. There were days when all of that would come rushing back full force. What gave me hope, what kept me moving on, was the idea that tomorrow could be different.

I was still plagued by sleeplessness, still staying up until 5 am, still passing out from complete exhaustion. When I was about 35, I found a new doctor, one who actually listened to me. She prescribed me a drug called diazepam. I began taking the diazepam at 9 pm every night. By 10, I was fast asleep. The more my sleep began to normalize, the better I felt. The panic lessened even more. Now I can go for months without having a panic attack or derealization. Thoughts of death still creep into my mind, but I’ve accepted them as a part of my life. Death comes for us all, there is no stopping it, so I have chosen to embrace the idea that someday I will surely die. And that’s ok. Our days in this life are numbered, a fact which makes those days our most valuable commodity.

There are still some sleepless nights even though I take my medication regularly. I don’t know why it doesn’t work sometimes. On those nights, I still create those fantasy worlds that soothed me through the latter part of my childhood and teenage years. Sleep and I may never fully get along, but at least for now, there is a tentative peace.