science of sleep

the last time i was not tired was fifth grade. i was just your typical ten year old: i had braces and glasses, i had crushes and cafeteria woes, i had the backstreet boys and the babysitters club. oh, and i had insomnia.

i can remember the day after my first sleepless night, standing on the black top (the play ground was reserved for "grade k" only), eating my snack (probably sliced apples or one of those handipack crackers with the spreadable orange cheese [yum!!]), waiting for my turn to jump rope (i could never do double dutch) and feeling unstoppable.

i now know that the accurate description for the condition is: manic.

i can remember looking around and laughing at everyone else on the inside. looking at them, the silly sleep-requiring creatures! didn't they realize how much they missed when their eyes were closed? i barely wanted to even blink, i was so afraid i'd let my opportunity for Greatness pass me by! they thought sleep was necessary. i saw myself as proof that it wasn't. look at me! i didn't sleep last night, and i'm fine. pssh.

i missed having dreams, though.

it lasted pretty much the entire school year, but its novelty had dissipated by december. usually i stayed in my room until the green glow of my digital clock read 11:00, and then i'd run downstairs to my parents' room (i'm sure they loved this) and announced with a whine and a barefooted stomp "i can't sleeeee-eeeeeeep!" at first they took pity, turning on the bedside lamp and folding me between them. They rubbed my back and let me watch the late night news with them in their feather soft king sized bed. One would rub my back while the other would hold my hand. After my thirty minutes of what i can only describe as womb-like safety, i would return to my master bedroom, sip some chamomile, and relax to some pachelbel and puccini. i wrote, some.

then patience wore thin. i was allowed one visit to vent, in the threshold of the doorway, then ordered back upstairs. they weren't being mean - they were just establishing boundaries and tired. they were mere mortals, after all - diurnal organisms desiring sleep. i, however, sat upright in my princess bed with all of my lights on, listening to everclear and eating saltine crackers (they are still a major comfort food for me).

in school i began to cry. my mind was so mixed up. sometime in the spring, the teacher sent a note home to my mother, suggesting that i speak with the school guidance counselor. i was relieved when i secretly read it on the bus on the way home after school - the guidance counselor! i knew where she was in the building - there was a sign in all caps on her office door. from a distance, it looked comfortable; it was one of the few rooms that had carpeting and wallpaper instead of the institutional speckled tile floor and spearmint green and white concrete cinderblock walls. i always wondered what she did all day. now i knew: she could help me sleep! i didn't understand puberty yet, but i figured my sleeplessness must be it and that i was just one of the first kids in my class to start going through it. hah.

i showed my mom the note, beaming, thinking she would be so happy. why hadn't she thought of it?! the guidance counselor! months now i had had this problem, and the whole time, the solution was the oasis right at the end of the hall!

oh. ohhhh, i was wrong.

my mom took the note as a personal affront to her parenting skills and i was in deep shit. how dare i cry at school? only kids with messed up home lives ever cried in school. she told me i was an embarrassment, and that next time i felt like i was going to cry i should remember that. as if i wasnt already mortified enough, right?

i never went to the guidance counselor. my teacher suspected i never gave my mom the note. i cried myself to sleep. and returned to normal.

hah.