a guide to insomnia

what keeps the modern woman up at night

Sometimes I question if I’ve ever done anything wholeheartedly. Fall in love or commit to a project. It’s always half-effort, half-reward. How often do all your cells regenerate, I search up. Every 7-10 years. I wonder if I have to wait this long for the feeling to go away. I can’t stand it a second longer, but patience is a habit, I’ll give it another restless night.

Spectator’s chronicles sponsored by cortisol spikes and melatonin gummies as ineffective as my attempts to get over anything. Observation, undeniably, always comes first, put it on low heat and let it simmer. When lying down feels like overheated drowning, come stand by the window instead. The bustling city is your playground, ready to be zoomed in on. Let’s try the grounding technique: name 5 things you can see. Neighbors across the street with their fluorescent lighting. A Dutch windmill. Plane over the horizon, carrying other insomniacs on a red eye flight. An old factory. My reflection staring back. Name 4 things you can hear. A freight train passing by. Somebody’s bed frame hitting the wall above my ceiling for an embarrassingly short couple of minutes. The clock. That one thing he once said echoing down and through the back of my hollow head. 3 things you miss. Sleeping in my mom’s bed while she’s out running errands. Girlhood. Not caring. Name 2 things you’re scared of. Not living up to my potential. That, and the enormity of my appetite. Everything looks like a paper maquette from up here — I’ve never lived so high up, eight floors closer to heaven. I wonder if this is the part of the story where everything skews downhill. Finally, name one thing you can feel. I pause. I wouldn’t know — I can’t feel anything because I never put my phone down.

They’ve lied to me about adulthood. Back when I was hopeful, clairvoyant, I wished for a pretty life. Be careful what you beg for, I got it now, which is to say I’ve reached the prime of freedom escapades, extra virgin olive oil, and disposable income wasted on ego-numbing prophecies and little shared plates. Everything is changing but myself, carried by inertia, could be fourteen or forty, it doesn’t matter for it all feels the same. I want to talk it out with church and heaven and ask the unpleasant questions, like why the glass is always half-full of regret and nothing ever renders a fresh beginning, always under construction. I know everything about marketing and the two-party system and nothing about love. There are bad things I’ve done in the heat of the moment and good things I’ve been putting off for five years. Trying to become a new person feels like ripping off an endless cuticle, a serpentine thread right to the bone, oozing innocence. To always be you, nowhere to hide, how tragic, tragic, tragic.

I’m ashamed of my trivial problems. Of witnessing terror and tears compressed into Instagram infographics, head brimming with atrocities and lives-turned-statistics, presidential debates where respect and integrity are traded for spectacles, only to peel my eyes off the screen and think about buccal fat and metabolism and how I hate all my clothes and how my friends would do just fine without me and how I’ve ghosted everybody I wanted to know and should probably die in this cozy apartment with efficient floor heating I can afford to rent. Hypocrite magnitude. This shame is unproductive, therapy self-indulgent, journaling dated, my writing bears no authority and thus useless. You’d probably hold my hand if I asked, but my snobbish decorum gets in the way of us because I hate your pedigrees and matcha-flavored gimmicks and how pathetically apolitical you are, standing for world peace yet nothing of substance, endorsing whoever’s on the left enough, indifferent because you can afford to be, preaching for community while your love language is networking. I’m aware I’m no better, maybe even worse than you; at least you’re filled with love, albeit conceptual, for pilates or humanity at first sight, and I’m filled with hatred and ghrelin, searching for somebody to split madness with like a fortune cookie. I look like my mother and get existential like my father. Addiction runs in the family; I’m addicted to feeling this way.

I think I’m ready to call it a night, eyelids burdensome enough to resort to serenity.

Wait. Not yet.

I get jolted out of sleep by a delirious dream or a nightmare, maybe both. It’s 4:12 in the morning, who am I to know peace? Secluded space, somewhere tropical judging by the vegetation, I’m hosting a party. Not sure how or why you’re in attendance, but I can see you on a sunbed by the pool, the unmistakable side profile I still find deliciously attractive, and you brought your girlfriend. I retreat. She looks a lot like me but prettier, pristine, untarnished by life’s cruelty. Maybe she is me, a better version, I don’t know. Something twists in me as your hand keeps playing with hers, fingers interlocked. I know I’m dreaming, but the knots in my stomach are real. I walk up to you ready for small talk, but my mouth won’t behave, I can’t muster up a word. Muffled, humiliating silence. Coarse nothing, a brick in my throat. I want to make amends, I reckon, but you never drop her hand as I’m hovering over your love nest, big brown-eyed monster with no place to turn or run to, your inconsiderate nature once again becoming the gravity that pulls me in, enticed by forever-ignorance. I’m awake now, thirsty and confused, two tears streaming down my face in perfect symmetry. How you push my buttons when you’re not even here, there, or anywhere, is beyond me. Why I miss it when I felt so alone with you is a question I don’t want an answer to. The dream is emblematic of your obliviousness — how insensitive, all of you, all of this memory, your audacity and galantness, you just didn’t know I’d feel some type of way about it. Decoding dreams is a childish practice, but this one’s too on the nose: that’s your whole premise, not knowing. I’m tired of splitting my ends like a wishbone. Your absence is folklore, a shadow of a long-forsaken silhouette sailing away. I still believe in you the way people believe in God or conspiracies. I’d still take you back if you were a person, not an abandoned concept of somebody who could’ve saved me if he hadn’t been so docile. How many more bad dreams, I whisper to myself, picking out daggers. I turn to the other side.

Early mornings are my favorite regardless of how poorly I slept that night. The promise of a day ahead, the nucleus of possibilities in its palm. My memory at its sharpest, my body not yet plagued by insatiable cravings and grudges. Rationale. At sunrise, the world feels manageable, conquerable even. Trimmed grass on the field, unabridged oxygen, lawn sprinklers. Somebody somewhere is playing golf right now. Feeling like a person with a beating heart and a hint of purpose before I log into the email factory and type away at my insignificant desk following up on my insignificant tasks. I call the shots here, I tell myself to imitate agency, but I’m not sure I believe it. I didn’t always have it easy, but always remained hopeful, assuming things would be different one day. Hope breeds sparse stagnation, something needs to give, and I get it now. I want lunch, a spaceship, and perfect leather boots handmade in Italy. I want to do something that matters beyond my head’s interior.

Later that day, over dinner, a girlfriend confesses in passing she’s an insomniac like me. I lower my voice and ask what pills she’d recommend, over the counter only, no prescription. I can’t go to the doctor about this, that would make my sleep problem real —and it’s not real until I say so, merely a consequence of caffeine and stress. I’m concerned for her health like I don’t recall ever being concerned for mine, but relieved I’m not the only one with a ruptured circadian rhythm and heart-shattering dreams to go along. She has delicate wrists and speaks eloquently, so I trust her advice. This is the closest I’ve felt to a person in a long time. Just for a moment, I begin to understand why all of this, everyone and everything all in one, is connected.

Tonight, resorting back to my pillow where everything begins and ends on an infinite loop, I’ll be questioning if I’ve ever done anything wholeheartedly. Fall in love or commit to a project. It’s always half-effort, half-reward. How often do all your cells regenerate?