Essays, Etc.

Sleep, Etc.

I rarely sleep anymore.

I suppose it’s my fault, I stay up too late typing words on my computer hoping someone will find them in a pleasing order and tell me they thought as much.

Of course, I never really slept that well in the first place; my whole life I’ve been plagued by a rampant brain that decides to kick into overdrive at night. It’s bullshit, and my thoughts are fucking irresponsible. They don’t help me, ever. It’s not like I think of some amazing new story to write that helps me become a writer. It’s always some stupid bullshit like “I wonder what all the ingredients in toothpaste are.”

So then, unless I want to listen to my stupid-ass presumptions about the chemical composition of toothpaste (“I wonder how much mint there is in it, and what makes it so damned minty! How do they make the chocolate one? Life is amazing,”), I have to get my ass out of bed and read the label, pretending to know what the chemicals are.

This has led me to being almost zombie-like, distant and weary much of the time. On occasion I’ll grab a nap after school to make up for lost sleep, but I get bitched at by friends and family about how it’s slowly killing me.

Which, it is. I totally understand that. It’s probably cut twenty years off my life at this point.

So it offers even more benefits than I originally mentioned! Damn, sleeping is awesome.

The most recent nap I took was actually during class, after we had finished working for the day.

We recently lost a student at my school over the weekend due to hypothermia (he had fallen in the water after a boating accident and didn’t get to a heat source in time), and my teacher had him as a student.

Twenty minutes of our class period was dedicated to him crying in front of us, pleading us to be safe because he loved us all so dearly and telling us about how God had told him that this was going to happen.

I was too tired to cry, although all I could feel was sympathy for the poor man. He was approaching seventy, maybe already had passed it, and to see his wrinkled face scrunch into that of so much pain and misery made me feel more sympathy than I ever have for another human being.

When the sister of the boy came in and my teacher hugged her for a full minute and cried into her shoulder, despite her being closer to the boy than my teacher ever had been, I felt even more sympathy than before.

But when they sat down and began talking about how much they had missed him, and when the teacher stood up and said “That’s all for today, but please, for the love of God, stay safe,” I felt tired. I felt exhausted, actually. Not just physically, but emotionally.

So, in front of the teacher and the boy’s sister, I laid down on my desk and slept. I slept even though I was surrounded by sadness and grief, despite the strong, heavy air that the news of death brings.

It was one of the best naps I’ve ever had.

I cannot say that I told him that I felt for him, or that I gave my regards to the boy’s sister. I didn’t feel it was my place, and I knew that I always hate people telling me they are sorry over bad situations in my life; it just reminds me of the fact that it happened.

I appreciate sympathy, but I don’t appreciate the memory that it brings along.

And, while I may not have been having fun while I was dreaming about the ingredients of toothpaste and a slow death by hypothermia, for the love of God, I was safe.