Tag Archives: insomnia

Non-fiction

Insomnia Pt. 386

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I know the feeling, waking up at one in the morning for no damn reason. It’s anxiety usually, but not last night. I lay awake and thought about horror movies.

A friend of mine in high school was sensitive like me, a little too overly sensitive. He couldn’t handle horror movies except a few, like Nightmare on Elm Street, only because he thought Freddy was cool. He wouldn’t watch any of them other than that. He came back from clogging class one weekend night and stayed at my house. It was a slumber party for the two of us. We lay on our stomachs right in front of the TV. My parents subscribed to HBO back then, and HBO showed schlocky horror films late at night through the week. I changed the channel to there, and it showed some guy who was trapped in a glass chamber while a bunch of scientists in lab coats watched him from the other side of the glass. We had no idea what the film was about since we’d caught the middle of it, but the bad guys (I guessed they were) observed the guy yelling at them to let him out. But they didn’t. The main bad guy nodded his head at one of the other people in the room. She flicked a switch, which triggered some sensor in the glass chamber, and the guy’s head exploded. I immediately started laughing. There’s something about a person’s head exploding in a cheap horror film that always makes me laugh, like watching a sledgehammer to a watermelon and the pulp bursting out. I laughed so hard that I started punching the carpet. But my friend didn’t think it was amusing.

“Dude, turn this off,” he said.

“No way,” I said. “This is hilarious.”

“No it’s not,” he said. “It’s not funny.” He was too damn sensitive. “Just turn it off, dude.”

“Okay, fine,” I said.

So I switched over to Cinemax, another channel my parents used to pay every month for, and it showed a movie with a steamy sex scene. My friend didn’t object to that of course. Neither of us did. The man and woman were engaging in foreplay.

“This is sweet,” my friend said.

We were waiting for the nudity to come, but a huge power drill impaled the man from the woman’s stomach and drilled him to pieces.

I started laughing again, but my friend didn’t think that was funny either, so he told me to turn it off as well. I wasn’t laughing at the cheap effects of the film per se, but also my friend’s reaction. That was the main reason for watching those films with him or any other friend. I always waited for their reactions, something I miss.

My insomnia may have come from the licorice root I took yesterday. What if it kept me up all night? The internet says the side effects from long-term use are high blood pressure, low potassium, edema, heart problems, kidney problems, hormonal imbalance, headaches, and liver problems. That’s a lot, which means it’s working.

Non-fiction

Inertia

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I sit around and beg God to give me energy, but all I find is the will to go to sleep. But sleep is hard to find these days. I’ve always been a notorious insomniac. I awoke at two in the morning and couldn’t fall back asleep. Too much worry. I’m sure that most people live with the same affliction. Only the cruel sleep soundly. Their evil deeds keep the rest of us awake. What if I’m wrong?

People ask, “How do you sleep at night?” when someone does something dastardly, like he lives without a conscience. And I’m sure some people do. I’ve slept next to those who snore their little brains out, and I grow envy over their slumber. I want to plug their noses so they’ll awaken abruptly, and then I’ll say, “Join the club.”

Thoughts were whirling in a cave last night in my humid room. I remember sleepovers when I was just a boy. All the other kids would fall asleep, and I was the one boy up. What was wrong with me for being so nervous in the company of others when I was trying to sleep?

I rubbed the back of a white dog in the coffee shop. I feel half awake and adrenalized. The day has broken. The sun is out. Another relentless morning as I listen to people chatter behind me about something. I can’t tell. It’s so loud in here. They’re playing a country song above the people’s voices.

I go through writer’s block and feel inertia in my bones. What a splendid problem. My job has robbed me of my imagination. I can’t think of other things.

I’m staring at a fellow’s cowboy hat at the table ahead of me. It’s white and made of straw with a sticker on the back that says, I’m stuck on H2O. A water enthusiast. Good.

The dog wags its tail next to me and howls at his master on a lazy Friday. I have to work later and make phone calls all morning. I wish I only had to send emails because I can’t stand to talk to people over the phone. Don’t most people hate it? I can tell. Text and emails are much more simple, aren’t they?

But anyway, the August air is hot and humid. The heat won’t end until October. It’s impossible to bear another two months of this. But I’m made to complain about anything. That’s what I’m here for. I’m a complaint machine. I file my complaints here. I’m cantankerous by myself but show a smile to others passing by who wave at me, such as a guy from Marin County. He’s arguably homeless, but he wears a lot of different clothes and looks as if he showers. He wears a heavy backpack every day in the coffee shop. He goes to the same customer and chats him up. And the customer gives him money to buy more coffee. It’s like he’s his benefactor. What would he do without him? The man gives it to him like a human feeding bread to a pigeon. The pigeon comes back for more and wants more than yesterday. It only adds to the problem. I haven’t given him a dollar. I fear that he would start depending on me.

I sip my coffee and drink my water, thinking what a daunting day is ahead of me, so much to work to do and not enough time.

An old man had to pull his pants up because his underwear was showing.

“No one in the US wears hats,” a woman says behind me.

“I heard Joe Biden got criticized for wearing a hat.”

What kind of comment was that? Why would he be criticized?

“Simone took the gold.”

Yes, it was her second gold medal.

Now they’re talking about equestrian. I tried watching it last week. All it was was women on horseback, making their horses dance on the field. I thought she would make the horse jump hurdles, but the sport must’ve changed.

They’re playing Four Non Blondes here, that old song from the nineties. Now it’s another folk song, or what they usually play here.

Anyway, what am I gonna do this weekend but sit around and relax, play tennis, and write, look for new jobs? The job market is rough. I read that now is a good time to have a job but a bad time to look for one, which is awful news for me. I guess I’ll have to live with what I have for now.

Non-fiction

The Annual Compliance Harassment Video

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I journal every morning as part of my morning routine. Paper isn’t my friend and never was. I’ve never enjoyed journaling, but it’s necessary like getting a checkup. You might get what I’m saying.

I journal to get my thoughts on paper like anyone does for the same reason. It’s better to do it that way than not to do it at all. Why am I sitting at this table and writing at six in the morning? Am I insane? Shouldn’t I be asleep right now? Maybe I should. But life doesn’t work that way. I woke up at one and then close to four in the morning before my alarm eventually went off at five in the morning. If I set my alarm for six, I could get more rest, but it doesn’t work that way as I said. I have too many worries.

My job, for instance, is a big stressor in my life. I worry about whom I have to call, and if they’re going to yell at me. I never know whom I’m going to get.

I had to watch a harassment training video yesterday brought to me by the HR department. It’s an annual compliance video they make me watch, full of bad actors who portray abusive employees at a company. The days are gone when you could date your coworkers. I guess I see the point from human resources. They want people to come to work without complications, but it doesn’t stop people from breaking the rules.

There was one scene where a transgender person posted a video on social media complaining that their coworker called them the wrong name because it was gender-specific. The training video said that what the transgender person did was right, posting the video on social media. I had to disagree. They should’ve complained to human resources instead of doing what they did, but that’s just me.

Every example, from sexual misconduct to racial insensitivity, ended up with the answer of reporting it to human resources. That was the big lesson learned through the hour-and-a-half-long video.

In one scene, a coworker told a joke involving a priest, a pregnant woman, and a Hispanic person to two other coworkers. A Hispanic lady walked by the room in the middle of the joke. The scene paused so that the voiceover person could explain that what the joke-teller was doing was wrong.

They continued the video right where the joke-teller delivered the punchline, “So the priest says, ‘What’s that speed bump doing there?'”

Everyone laughed except the Hispanic woman who walked by, rolling her eyes. I never got to hear the full joke, but speed bumps are typically funny. I laugh inside whenever I see a car hop one.

In another scene, a woman in her thirties, I would guess, showed an old man how to use the internet at work. After she helped him, she walked away and posted on social media that she was tired of helping old folks with technology and that they should retire already.

The video cut to the next scene, where the old man read what she’d posted and shook his head in offense. It was hard to believe that she would post something like that if she knew the old man followed her on there. I doubt he would’ve done anything anyway.

I felt guilty after watching it, even though I work remotely, not in the office, and I never even did anything wrong. I answered the questions to a quiz at the end of every scene correctly. They awarded me with a certificate at the end. It was painful to watch, but at least I didn’t have to do any work for an hour and a half.

Non-fiction

Insomnia

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I went to bed at nine o’clock last night, woke up at one o’clock this morning for no reason, and couldn’t go back to sleep. It was time to give up, crawl out of bed, and take a walk outside. The temperature was easily over eighty degrees, but the heat wasn’t what bothered me because it was cool in my apartment. What made me lose sleep were thoughts I couldn’t control–thoughts about the past and future, regrets over what I did and what I never did.

I was never a good sleeper. Some people sleep just fine, from the minute they go to bed to the second their alarm goes off. I can’t relate to those people. They usually snore, keeping everyone else awake.

My college roommate used to snore, and it drove me insane. Sometimes I thought about that scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when the patient smothered the Jack Nicholson character with a pillow. Now I would never do that, but man, there were thoughts.

When I have insomnia, I want the rest of the world to have it so I won’t feel alone. It’s so quiet outside that I believe everyone is sleeping except for me, which is untrue. A lot of people lose sleep. I read that one out of three adults suffers from it, and it can lead to obesity and diabetes, not to mention anxiety and depressive disorders.

There had to be a way to combat the insomnia. I watched YouTube videos while I was up until three o’clock before I tried to go back to sleep. My brain just wouldn’t shut off. Then my alarm sounded at five o’clock in the morning, when I usually get up. I hate the song that plays on my iPhone. The piano is too haunting, like a ghost is going to crawl out from under the bed. It vaguely sounds like the theme to The Exorcist. I turn it off right away and jump out of bed. Sometimes my hand, with a mind of its own, hits the snooze accidentally so the song repeats. But all of the other songs are just as bad. I can’t win with the alarm because it sucks to be awakened by anything, such as a chainsaw outside of my window when someone is chopping up a tree, or a bunch of cackling crows that make me want to throw a coffee can at them and watch them fly away.

Now I’m at the coffee shop, half dead, and I have to work today. It’s going to be another long week. I just hope that tonight I can sleep the whole night through.