Sleep Deprivation

During my freshman year of college I didn't sleep much. Over the summer before that year I had filled the void of year-round high school sports with an online game called Artifact. The game never stopped, so the easiest way to be good at it was to play non-stop, which I did. I didn't really taper off when I started classes so the math of a day became unfavorable for sleep. I managed to stay social mainly by roping a couple of my new friends at college into playing as well. As the semester dragged on the nights grew shorter until I was getting an average of four hours of sleep during the weeknights and cramming in twelve hours a night on weekends. As the weeks droned on the haze began to descend over my world and it slowly turned into Grand Theft Auto, minus the larceny and killing. Everything out of my immediate line of sight didn't exist and things that appeared out of the ether were only there long enough for me to pass by. When finals rolled around everything was magnified because I couldn't sit on cruise control through my classes anymore. There were papers and projects due that I had been pushing off like dust bunnies in front of a push broom. Now they were clambering up the handle like zombies in a low-budget horror movie. My weeknight sleep went from four hours to two. My weekend sleep went from twelve to four. While backing out of a parking space after lunch I fell asleep while looking over my shoulder and drug the front of my truck along the side of the car parked next to me. The only thing that woke me up was the jolt of its rear bumper losing the tug of war it had been playing with my front bumper. To this day I don't certainly know that incident happened because it was impossible to separate the real from the dreams. My friend who was riding with me told me what I had done and he had no reason to lie to me but my own brain has no comment on the matter.

Despite instances like that one I still functioned fairly normally. I was always exhausted but outwardly I appeared to be normal. There was also something about that base state of mind wherein the brain has moments of really, really incredible things during its struggle to simple maintain thoughts like "Eat food," and "Pants are required to leave your room." The toll it took is noticeable. At almost thirty I'm already turning into my father, falling asleep while the TV laughs at itself at six-thirty. Where the nineteen year old version of myself could keep my eyelids open with willpower alone the twenty-nine year old version struggles to avoid head bobs even after enough Full Throttle to kill three silverback gorillas. At nineteen I drove straight from Lincoln, Nebraska to South Padre Island, Texas, somewhere around twenty-two hours. In 2011 I had to pull over in eastern Colorado after seven or so hours because I was going to turn my car into modern art.

By now you're thinking "Just get more sleep, idiot," but it has never been that simple. When I descend into that mode of minimal sleep required by biology to continue living it gets harder and harder to get a full night of rest the longer I go without one. The desperation for a cool pillow blossoms into this fear that it isn't merely my consciousness slipping away when my eyelids close, it's the sands in the hourglass of my time here on Earth. The slowing, heavy breaths do not feel like dreams being pulled up over me but instead like Father Time with an ether-soaked rag. Try sleeping with that image in your brain, no matter tired you are. If you can I'd like to briefly explain the theory of perpetual motion and cold fusion to you because you are capable of anything.

In those moments I find myself jealous of those rare, comfortably religious people. Think less Rick Santorum, more Gandhi. But I don't desire their religion. I still look at using religion to cure my fear of death and the unknown as I look at people who quit smoking by using chew. What I do want is their faith. That Philosopher's Stone in their life that has told them the path they are on is true and washes away their self-doubt. For now my religion is kept in books. In books I have the unwavering faith that if I keep searching for answers on a nightly basis I will invariably wake up. Usually because I have passed out mid-sentence.