LJ Idol, Week 17: (open topic) Falling Asleep

[threeplusfire]

There's a song by Counting Crows on their first album, titled "Perfect Blue Buildings." That album is one of a handful I've kept since my teenage years, one I listened to with my door closed against the inevitability of school the next morning, in my first apartment, in the car, on my CD player in Brno. This one song however is what I find myself listening to on sleepless, aching nights. Adam Duritz sings slowly, and every word feels like the truth in my bones.

Its 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday
It doesn't get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle of these lives which are completely meaningless
Help me stay awake, I'm falling...

One of the things I do when I can't sleep is bake. I turn on the music and go to work in the kitchen, baking pies and cakes. One night when I was fifteen I baked the most beautiful, glossy strawberry pie I've ever made while listening to Lies by Guns 'N Roses over and over. Last night it was chocolate sponge cake with lingonberry jam and covered in chocolate frosting. I can't possibly eat all this food and I don't really want to, but it is a way to divide the endless terrible seconds into something bearable and sweet.

I hate to sleep. I've hated it for a long time, in different ways. It gets in the way of a thousand other things I could be doing. Mostly it is the getting into bed, the long dark before the fall, that I hate. In that time I have my worst panic attacks. Circles and circles of cold thoughts, of despair and nightmares and fear. Waves of futility pound at me until I cry into the mattress or try to stave them off by reciting multiplication tables to fifteen.

My paternal great-grandmother died when I was five. I remember my father in a dark suit, and being so angry that I couldn't go with him because I knew he would be seeing my grandparents. My parents gave me a book about death. The story centered around a young boy who sailed toy boats with his grandfather. What I remember most is reading the section in the back of the book written for parents trying to explain death to their children. It cautioned them not to equate death with sleep, as this might cause children to become afraid of bed time and the dark.

A few years later my parents gave me a clock radio. It had a button that would play the radio for fifty nine minutes and then shut off. I kept it at the head of my bed, and sometimes pushed the button two or three times before I went to sleep. In the late 1980s a band called Anything Box had a radio hit called "Living in Oblivion." I would hear it almost every night. It always made me cry, because I was so utterly afraid. Twenty years later, and I am still afraid of the dark, of sleep, of the unsettling imagery of lonely toy sailboats on small ponds rendered in watercolors.

Don't tell me now,
I won't feel those words, I won't feel the lies they tell
Can you hear my scream?
It's for everyone, for everyone...
I am so afraid of living in oblivion

Strange how you can hate sleep so much, and be so tortured by insomnia. I'm trying to kick my sleeping pill habit, because I think it can't be good for me and I'm tired of having to take so many drugs for so many things. They won't make the dark seem less meaningless, or render oblivion in more palatable terms. I just want to be able to lay down and fall asleep, without those agonizing hours in the dark.

Comments

[brienze.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating to me, because it's yet another way we are utterly different. (It's nice that we get along well anyway!)

Sleep is where most of the good stuff happens! Mistakes fixed, crazy ideas followed through on, problems solved by some busy little part of my brain that doesn't speak to me directly.

[boxsofrain.livejournal.com]

Well your lack of sleep does help produce some lovely baked goods! I hope you get yourself in a schedule. I like to put on a good movie in bed, that usually does the trick (along with sleeping pills sometimes of course).

[shadowwolf13]

I love Counting Crows and that album. :)

I used to have a problem sleeping because I was plagued by terribly real nightmares all night long. Luckily they've gone away for the most part.

I hope things come together for you.

[darkprism.livejournal.com]

This reminded me (strangely) in equal parts of "The Waitress" - movie with Keri Russel - and this morning at 4 a.m. when I was wide awake and aching from lack of sleep.

Tragic and lovely.

~*~

[jfargo.livejournal.com]

Hard to empathize, as I love sleep, but I also love that little setting on my alarm clock that gives me music for an hour. I've used it many times, and love letting music soothe me to sleep.

[brightflashes.livejournal.com]

Beautiful post. That song has a special place in my heart for entirely different reasons. I love your post.

[cymry.livejournal.com]

everyone looks at me oddly when i tell them i hate to go to bed. i don't mind the sleeping part, it's the time spent waiting for it to arrive, the ideas that filter through, the idea that so much is rushing by me and i'm missing out. i've never stopped to analyze it any further than that though; maybe i should.

and baking sounds like a wonderful way to deal with insomnia.

[alycewilson.livejournal.com]

I used to listen to music to fall asleep now. At hard times in my life, only certain albums would do, such as John Lennon's "Greatest Hits" or the "Magnolia" soundtrack. I also remember quite fondly coming home from a school dance and being too hyped to sleep. I heard "Dream Weaver," and it was so magical through my headphones that every since, I've loved that song.

[bewize.livejournal.com]

This was a really interesting and insightful entry. I enjoyed reading it very much. I hope your insomnia problems resolve. Mine never really have.

[baxaphobia.livejournal.com]

Oh hugs. From one who falls asleep really quickly usually, I can't imagine this.

[johnmill79.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought about it much, but I can very much empathize. Sleep tends to be when the bad things come out; when it's so quiet that all you have is your big, scary thoughts. I might well suffer from insomnia for this reason as well.

[theafaye.livejournal.com]

I never understood insomnia until I was pregnant and discovered that it goes with the territory. You know that a baby is not far off when you choose to iron at 3am...

I thought this really conveyed the whole vibe of insomnia. Your choice of language and tone is superb.

Oh yes - and I love that album too :o)

[caersidi.livejournal.com]

I have such a rich dream life that I couldn't hate sleeping even though sometimes when I have a lot to do I rather resent having to go to sleep for 6 hours. :)

Interesting post.