Insomnia

https://vimeo.com/77718438

Sarah Tye

Multimodal Assignment #1

THE CURE TO INSOMNIA

            I could never really sleep at night. It must have started when I was a toddler, terrified out of slumber by the ferocious monsters hiding in my closet waiting for me to drift off and become a vulnerable, easy target. I refused to allow them to eat me, training myself to stay awake, one eye fixed on that crack of darkness in my closet doorway that never seemed to shut all the way. When I grew a bit older, the monsters became killers, kidnappers, the man with the hook from I Know What You Did Last Summer and other characters from movies my imagination held onto. “They will come for you once you fall asleep. Stay awake, Sarah.” Now, my body’s undeveloped ability to naturally fall asleep cannot be cast off to childhood fears. Now, it needs a label. Now, I need medicine. Now, I am an insomniac.

            The inability to sleep is one of the most common complaints of people my age, a mixture of stress and restlessness about our oh-so-promising futures, our million exams next week, and mistakes we might have made last weekend. We find our own personal ways of dealing with pressure, or wallowing in it. I pretend like I can sleep normally each evening. After dinner I study, read, brush my teeth. I am always nervous in the evening, while everyone else retreats from reality into his or her own private dream worlds, I know I will be left here alone and awake. I get into bed each night at bedtime. But my mind is fidgety, twitching in its impatience. I am bored. I check the time on my phone: 1:01. I check again: 2:36. I make lists of stupid things in my head such as,  “People I Like: Don Draper, Jesse Pinkman, the midget from Game of Thrones…” I plan what I am going to do tomorrow. I check my e-mail. I check the time: 3:30. I turn the light on. I write myself a reminder to buy contact solution tomorrow. I turn the light off. I start to count in my head, assigning each number a different color, texture, and design. I stare at the ceiling. I’m tired, but my mind continues to race anxiously, restlessly. I close my eyes and beg my eyelids to take me to my unconscious; I beg them, almost audibly for a break. I need sleep. My eyelids flick open, symbolizing that they have denied my request once again. I’m bored. So, mostly I lie in bed, and I think.

            Anxiety follows insomnia around wherever it goes. Sometimes it brings panic along with it. But other times, anxiety is kinder. Sometimes, the impossibly thick, anxious cloud that devours me is light. Sometimes I can see through it, and I can lie there and think clearly. When my mind is blissful and I am thinking exceptionally well, out of boredom I try to answer unanswerable questions. If I can answer them at all, they can only be answered by me. These questions have a funny way of nearly exhausting me into sleep. I obsess over them, my mind growing weary as I dig through every memory, dusting off every last corner in my psyche to find an answer, though I am never quite sure what I am looking for. My mind grows weary, it grows drowsy, and sometimes these puzzling questions can put me to sleep. Maybe tonight I can think of one of these questions, exhaust my mind so that it can give my body a break.

        I am lying in bed viciously arguing with my eyelids again. I beg them to rest, but they quickly flick open in refusal. I check the time: 3:47. I stare at the ceiling. I decide to plan my future. I fantasize a scene where I am at a job interview at some fancy pants art gallery. The intimidating boss, a knowledgeable pseudo-intellectual philosopher artist asks me “What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?” I spend the next hour dashing into memories, searching for an answer, trying, incessantly to tire out my head. “What is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen?” I remember my semester abroad, the view of Florence from the terrace of the Piazza Michelangelo. I think of my favorite room at the Art Institute of Chicago. I even think of the flatirons with just a trace of dusty snow. Is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen a place? Is it nature? I think of the sea, and quickly decide that is a flimsy obvious cliché. My mind gets nervous; it always gets nervous when I begin searching for these stimulating answers, as if it is angered by my questions. I feel stress. Is the most beautiful thing subjective; is it something personal, delicate and special only to me? Mind sprinting, I think of the faces of my best friends, my family, my little sister’s hopeful smiles. I am turning in, rushing through quick thoughts; I cannot find my answer. “What is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen? What does that mean?” My mind is thinking in desperation of Paris at night, the first visible days of fall in my hometown. I can almost feel my brain panting in fatigue, it’s giving into my unanswerable question. Have I tired it out at last? My mind grows weary, caught up inside of itself. It grows drowsy, it’s hanging by a string on to consciousness. My mind is blank. I finally fall asleep.