However, there isn't much that you can do about writer's block, especially when you're passing out at the front desk at work because you're slowly becoming an insomniac for no good reason. Which is what is happening to me. Here's the weird thing about insomnia, or just not being able to sleep in general: you WANT to sleep. You get pissed when you can't sleep, and you THINK you're tired. But for whatever reason, your mind won't let you drift out, or it wakes you up two hours later with weird paranoia. For example, I woke up at 2:30 last night convinced that the Israeli guy sleeping on my couch was burrowing his way into my dreams and infecting my mind by the very nature of him sleeping on the other side of my bedroom wall. And then at 5:00 I was up again because my pillow was too lumpy and I couldn't get comfortable so I thrashed around until I realized I was over heating so I took off the blankets until 10 minutes later when I got too cold.
Over the summer, when I first got my bed and moved into my new apartment, I wasn't able to sleep either. It was 100 degrees in my little bedroom without air conditioning. I convinced myself by the end of the summer that I had bought the wrong bed and I would never have a good night sleep in New York again. That feeling went away come September when I got into a stage of such good night sleeps (exactly how the manager at Sleepy's had promised) that I would wake up in the morning and literally ask myself if it was possible to ever be unable to sleep again my whole life.
Well, here's the thing that insomnia is teaching me after my first night of literal inability to sleep in months: sleeping is not about the bed you're in, or the couch your on or the toilet bowl you pass out against. No no. The ability to sleep is all in our heads. It grows in our minds and it extends to our bodies. It has nothing to do with who we're sleeping beside but how easily they're able to burrow into our brains and infect our feelings. It has nothing to do with how many hours you were up the day before, but how easily you're able to accept what you did. And a lot of times, that's something that we can't control. No matter how hot, cold or comfortable we are, and no matter who's sleeping on the other side of our wall or even right beside us.
posted by iliza @ 1:07 PM
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