I’ve bumped into everything in our house so far this morning, including a table whose leg I’ve knocked off. I’ve dropped every single thing I’ve picked up. It seems I did not sleep well. It’s a bit annoying. I’d even made myself a cosy cocoon in the northernmost room (the library – I still maintain a peculiar notion I had as a child that north was “up”, literally as well as figuratively on a map, and it gives me quite a lot of pleasure to exercise the idea) for maximum peace and quiet, minimal disturbance and the sheer comfort of being surrounded by stuff. I thought it had worked, though thinking back, that thought relates to waking up multiple times in the night and saying “yeah, this is working well”, which is obviously not sleeping well. Slept poorly enough to sleep through my alarm again, though despite its havoc on my morning routine, I plainly needed.
Now I’m sagging over a keyboard, having forced myself through exercise where my eyes kept sliding closed of their own volition even as weights swung back and forth. It’s that dumb, stunned feeling behind the bones of my face – when I pause in typing, there’s absolutely nothing going on behind them – a tender absence of function. I’m also beginning to get angry with myself, or at least with the shadow me who’s orchestrating this nonsense. The one who likes the later hyper state which develops on a lack of sleep for days at a time. I like it too, so I guess the shadow me is just me, rather than some convoluted metaphor about tiredness being the absence of sleep/light and so on. I’m not sure I have it in me to chase that one down today. But if it’s not a Shadow Me (those capitals give me the chills), then it’s something else resetting levers and flicking switches just as I’m about to fall asleep, or waking me up. Also there was a really weird noise outside at about five o’clock. I could not bring myself to climb out of bed and look, but I did pray that it really was an alien invasion and I’d never need to think about sleep again. Or I was awake in a dream, which is even less helpful than not being asleep.
I am aware that I am pouring too much into my desire to be asleep and get enough of it. I’m setting the stakes too high, which just increases the risk and consequences and confers no hope. Reframing then: I would prefer to fall asleep, stay asleep and have seven to eight hours sleep a night. Although I don’t like it, I’m capable of functioning on zero hours sleep for a night provided I can crash out the next night. Even though it feels like sleeping for a couple of hours is better than not sleeping at all, that’s absolutely incorrect for me. There must be a minimum though, probably. Under four leaves me utterly fucked, I reckon.
And now my fucking mouse’s batteries have died. I was coming around to sticking with today, but now I’m very much opposed to the whole fucking palaver.
