I wrote a piece called “I am not going to sleep tonight” a while ago. Ever since my father passed away, my sleep has been disturbed in one way or another. Before that, I used to fall asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. It always felt strange to me for I was an anxious person. Drifting off instantly and sleeping for long stretches was my normal. If my sleep was disrupted for a while, I could always make up for it by sleeping extra later. I also never, ever remembered my dreams. They were like a part of my life that simply was not revealed to me. For the last five years, my relationship with sleep has been unstable. I’m putting the obvious trauma of my father’s passing aside for a moment, although his death definitely shifted something in my brain around loss. Strangely, his passing alone didn’t immediately ruin my sleep. The medications I was advised to take did.
It was my first time in a psychiatrist’s office. Therapy was familiar territory for me, but I didn’t know what to expect from someone who could prescribe things. I had a short list of symptoms written down because I knew the appointment would be quick, and I didn’t want to fall apart trying to explain how sick I felt. I read the list out loud. The doctor turned out to be a surprisingly gentle, understanding dude. He prescribed me Prozac. Of course he did. Where I live, Prozac is handed out like candy, especially if you go to a psychiatrist at a public hospital. That’s what I did. I wasn’t about to pay private-clinic prices just to have “official” help recorded on paper.
During my first month on Prozac, I started waking up in the middle of my sleep. At my next appointment, I found out my original doctor had moved abroad. On paper, that doesn’t sound like such a tragedy, but I hadn’t even gone to him by my own initiative. Some relatives had recommended him, and they were the ones who took me there the first time, to keep me company. They were being kind. And I didn’t want to be difficult, being the freshly-fatherless niece.
The second psychiatrist prescribed a generic sleeping pill along with my regular Prozac. The sleeping pill knocked me out completely. I stayed asleep for around 11–13 hours a day, and when I was awake, I moved like a zombie. My eyes wouldn’t fully open like the now-popular expression models do. My body ached like I’d just been in a car crash. I slept through alarms without hearing a single one. That last part is what finally made me quit the medication. My school term was getting serious and, if I couldn’t wake up, nothing else in my life mattered. My sleep problems continued here and there after that, but they weren’t heavy enough to worry me yet.
Then, there was the earthquake. In the months after a major earthquake in my country, my sleep collapsed. I started using sleep as a control mechanism. The meaning of sleep changed completely for me, although I couldn’t see the connection at the time. I would lie in bed, wide awake, until 04:00 am. My body would only relax sometime around 04:30. Only then could I let myself slip under. After a few months of this, I mentioned it to my therapist. That’s when he helped me notice something: I was staying awake until the approximate hour the earthquake had happened. Only after that time passed did my body “allow” me to rest.
I realized I was afraid of losing people to death, afraid they would die while I slept. Darkness falls, the city quiets down, and my mind starts its nightly run from childhood fears to present ones. “Someone is definitely going to break into the house. I can’t sleep until the sun comes up.” “There will be another earthquake. Everyone I love will die. I’ll be the only one left, and the guilt will follow me for the rest of my miserable life.”
Whenever there was even a small earthquake where I live, my heart would race so fast I couldn’t catch my breath. My hands shook. My nervous system didn’t trust sleep anymore. If I had something important the next day, a meeting, an event, anything that mattered, I couldn’t sleep the night before. Sometimes I started choosing not to sleep as a way to cope. My heart either pounded so hard I felt every beat in my throat, or it slowed down so much that I wondered if I was already asleep and just didn’t know it. That’s where I am now.
I’m writing this at 05:28. I have to wake my mother up at 05:50. Once again, I’m in one of those hours where I don’t know what else to do, so I write to avoid being crushed by the silence of the night. I still love sleep. I still crave it.
But my consciousness isn’t gentle with me when I’m sleeping anymore. Perhaps it has become one of those instinctive things inside me that I can no longer trust.
My last Mirrors piece underwater might be less depressing.
Cover art is Max Klinger German’s Awakening, plate eight from A Love.
