Insomnia

Last night I said I'd write something about something less serious than nostalgia. I think I mentioned the ballooning density of Nicki Minaj's butt as a possible topic of bloggersation (because that is afterall a real word). Well, I was lying when I said that; I have no intention of ever writing anything about that...not unless it mysteriously grows again and my friend Iona is there to point it out...then I'll have to comment. I'll have no choice.

No, today I'll write about something that's not so much dear to my heart, but more a pain in my ass...


"When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake"

 This may be the truest line of dialogue ever spoken in an Edward Norton movie. That's from Fight Club which is, excluding maybe American History X,  Ed Norton's best movie. Be honest, you never saw Incredible Hulk, did you? Didn't think so. But you have seen Fight Club...or have you? (If you have, and your not talking about it then good; you clearly know the rules of Fight Club.) If you haven't then shame on you. It's pretty awesome. 

Edwards unnamed protagonist in Fight Club suffers from crippling insomnia. He can't sleep soundly on his IKEA bed, or anywhere else for that matter. He's never asleep, but then again; he's never really awake either.

That's an awful way to live, going day to day with little sleep. Often no sleep. Insomnia. I get it. I've got it.

This is the eighth straight day that I've been awake to see the sunrise (I'm speaking figuratively here; the sun never shines in Scotland.) I'm awake when the day begins, and I'm still awake when it ends. I get maybe 2 hours of sleep a night. If I'm really lucky. Obviously this is not an ideal situation. I climb into my own IKEA bed, hike up the duvet close my eyes...and then I open them again minutes later, when I realize that I'm not actually going to sleep tonight. This has been going on for eight days. I have had roughly 17 hours of sleep out of a possible 192.

The two weeks previous to these hellish eight days were much the same, only I eventually crashed one afternoon and ended up sleeping for seventeen hours. That was semi-restless, full of nightmares, but it was still sleep. I've pretty much been awake since then.

I'm starting to understand how this guy felt:

  

I'm not advocating attempted murder; no way! But remember when Jacky went a little stir-crazy in the Overlook Hotel? Yeah, I get it. All work and no play (plus no sleep, probably) makes Jack a dull boy indeed. It also severely pisses Graham off too.

There's that great scene in The Shining where we see Jack just standing over his wife in their room, looking at her with mad eyes, a homicidal demeanor and you can tell, just plain old exhaustion; I can totally relate to this exhaustion. I'm more than exhausted.

I just went out to my car and had a conversation with an English man who was walking down the hill that our street sits on, he was carrying a thermos and talking about cats and drunk teenagers. it's 5:41am. I am about 62.7% sure that this didn't actually happen. I think I'm starting to lose it. For someone who likes to pride himself on his rationality this is slightly worrying. And by slightly I mean terrifyingly.

I'm so damn tired that I'm actually sitting here listening to Santana tracks. Which Santana tracks? I'm not sure; ones with guitar solos. I'm hoping they bore me to sleep eventually...but the prognosis on this is not looking too great.



He sorta looks like Jerry Stiller, or more appropriately, Arthur from King of Queens...

The blogging probably isn't helping, but I'm not going to sleep anyway So why not do something that's enjoyable? it beats the hell out of staring up at the ceiling for hours counting the minutes and hours that slip by.

I can pinpoint where this started, but not why. I know that it started around about the middle of the Playoffs. It hasn't gone since. If watching basketball is what caused this insomnia then it totally wasn't worth it! Okay, that's a lie. It was. But damn, if I'd have know it was going to become such a major imposition I'd have just payed for the ESPN package, recorded the games then watched them later! Would have saved me a lot of stress and headaches (I've got one long headache that's perpetually pounding on my frontal lobe)! I wouldn't be awake at 5:50 listening to the same long Santana guitar solo on ten different Santana songs from three different Santana albums (shake things up a bit hombre!). I'd be lying asleep next to my wife in my IKEA bed.

I can relate to the feeling of the protagonist from Fight Club. I get what his deal was. He couldn't sleep and it was playing with his emotions (What up Big Perm...Big Worm!)* I understand because my emotions are being played with too.

* Please tell me someone got the Friday reference there?

I'm done with Santana.

"Bad Medicine" by Bon Jovi just started up on the old iPod. Possible the greatest song ever written, right? Maybe that's just my exhaustion talking. I hope so, Bon Jovi actually suck (in a totally listenable way). If I'm starting to believe that this is the greatest song ever written then I really have problems. It's not even the best song ever written about medicine! That accolade totally goes to "Sexual Healing" which I know technically isn't about medicine (well, it's never explicitly mentioned) but medicine heals, and that's good enough for me.

Okay, I guess it's time to go and continue watching Charlie Murphy: I will not Apologize on Netflix. Yup, I actually did just say that. And I actually will enjoy it. I will not apologize.