Insomnia is like trying to meditate during a near-death experience. A strobe of memories rushing.
I tend to drive myself sleepless by first thinking about not thinking. I get in bed, make myself as comfortable as possible, and then focus on my breathing, and that only. Sometimes this works — and it’s brilliant — but usually my eyes pry themselves WIDE OPEN, I feel entirely stuck and everything’s eerily quite (suddenly, as if there were shouting and shooting and car crashes moments earlier). The past comes back jet-fast. And wow. Holy shit is it annoying.
Ideas spiral and twist, of course. A week ago, I was convinced for almost a full day (some serious overnight residue, right there) that everyone secretly hated my short stories, and that they’d planned an immaculate intervention over coffee to inform me of this. No logic in it, of course: it was just something I “knew” from a few very important seconds the day earlier, in which I’d slightly spilled, yes, coffee on the back of someone’s shirt — during which they acted like they kinda cared but kinda didn’t simultaneously. No big deal turns into the only deal. The all of it deal. Coffee dude is a straight-up fiction hater for real. Luckily sleep usually comes to me sweetly and often. I’m more of a wide-awake phase kind of guy by nature.
This was maybe my third week of full-born insomnia of maybe life, so in retrospect, it’s almost kind of cute when it comes along. If it comes to you, you’ll have long long long bittersweet thoughts, to be sure, and everything will really fall apart, and maybe nothing will seem real. And panic. And oh shit. Etc.
But other times?
Other times, it’s not so bad. Other times, it’s a soft sweet voice… “stay with me, darling. It’s getting late.” It’s quiet and it’s only you.
