Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Resistance to Sleep or Insomnia Distorted? Maybe.

When I have to, I can make myself sleep. Just closing my eyes and staying quiet are enough; however, once in a rare while, part of me rebels and wants me to do something worthwhile like reading a book or listening to music, encouraging the “you’re wasting your time with sleep” thought to keep me awake.

Medical science has an advice list for insomnia, but no advice for sleep disorders could work for me. For example, if I avoided caffeine, it would do nothing to me. My body -as contrary as the person living inside it- actually feels sleepy if I drink a hot cup of tea or coffee. Still to be on the safe side, after 5 PM, I only drink decaf or herbal teas.

Although I have written some verse on insomnia, I don’t have insomnia. I can happily say that I have never in my life used one sleeping pill. What I have should probably be called “Voluntary Sleep Resistance Syndrome.” This label, in reality, can be filed under the heading “struggling with the past, to claim the future.”

The past started with my resistance (during dinosaur time) when getting put to bed while all the adults were still up and around. Since children like to imitate others, being the only child at the time didn’t help at all. Later on, through my school years, I made up excuses to stay up longer because I had “too much homework.” Even later, when my bedtime didn’t matter to anyone anymore, I reasoned that I was losing too much valuable time during sleep. This reasoning, I am afraid, is still in the background of my mind, working unnoticed like my circulatory system.

Another theory I have as a reason for resistance can be called “the prince phobia.” They raised me on all kinds of stories. Of course, inside my mind I changed them -especially the ending- to my liking.

One of these stories was the “Sleeping Beauty.” I decided way back when that I would never be a sleeping beauty if the prince did show up.

In my version, the Sleeping Beauty never slept that long when the witch cursed her, but she woke up and had the witch put in jail. Sleeping Beauty’s parents, just to keep away the other witches from their contentious daughter, made it seem as if the princess had been sleeping.

Sleeping Beauty looked over all the princes in her surroundings and didn’t let anyone come near her, except one naive-yet intelligent, gentle, and handsome prince who liked books. When the Sleeping Beauty saw the prince approaching, she faked sleep. This kind of faking has to be okay since some princes like princesses who are sleeping; yet, in reality, a true princess never sleeps.

Maybe, this story telling and retelling had a subliminal effect on me about my bedtime, but then, who’d want an unknown prince kissing her while she slept? Not me, I'd rather know what I am getting into, unless I have African Trypanosomniasis, in other words sleeping sickness.

One encouragement I give myself when I find myself resisting to sleep is to look forward to a dream, in case in it I find something good enough to write about. After all, dreams always make sleeping worthwhile, because anytime one is waiting for a dream, all resistance fades away.