Sleep. Not doing it. Not having enough of it. Not staying asleep for more than two hours.
Sleep depravation training is in full swing. It stops my brain from accessing easy words like tap water, but somehow lets sporadic through. A microfilter cutting out the everyday words I need.
Nothing helps. Melatonin has yet to crack the wall of sleep. Magnesium. Tart cherry juice. Unisom. Avoiding chocolate after 4pm, skipping caffeine all day, drinking mint tea: none of them have budged a brick. Sleep is the fortress I am desperate to hold, yet it is impenetrable. I cannot lay seige to sleep. There is no one to starve out, no livestock to kill, no water source to poison. I am the thing in my own way. My body is the wall, my brain the soldiers hurling rocks and launching trebuchets outside.
Margot is the disturbance inside. Before I even fall asleep she squeezes my stomach to see if my dinner will stay down or come back up again. She pushes against my organs all night, a consistent alarm clock every two hours to wake up, relieve myself, sip water, try to fall back asleep. By half-three there is no falling back asleep. Even with a full 25 mg of doxylamine nothing will break down the wall after 3:30am.
My only hope is to sleep through that deviled hour and straight through until morning.
I need a trojan horse: a sleeping pill disguised as something else. Striding through the front gates of Sleep, joyously pulled by its only inhabitant. Then, when I am asleep, I can open the gates wide. Give entrance to the army of exhaustion I have amassed outside and finally, blissfully rest.
— jthrill
Sleep depravation training is in full swing. It stops my brain from accessing easy words like tap water, but somehow lets sporadic through. A microfilter cutting out the everyday words I need.
Nothing helps. Melatonin has yet to crack the wall of sleep. Magnesium. Tart cherry juice. Unisom. Avoiding chocolate after 4pm, skipping caffeine all day, drinking mint tea: none of them have budged a brick. Sleep is the fortress I am desperate to hold, yet it is impenetrable. I cannot lay seige to sleep. There is no one to starve out, no livestock to kill, no water source to poison. I am the thing in my own way. My body is the wall, my brain the soldiers hurling rocks and launching trebuchets outside.
Margot is the disturbance inside. Before I even fall asleep she squeezes my stomach to see if my dinner will stay down or come back up again. She pushes against my organs all night, a consistent alarm clock every two hours to wake up, relieve myself, sip water, try to fall back asleep. By half-three there is no falling back asleep. Even with a full 25 mg of doxylamine nothing will break down the wall after 3:30am.
My only hope is to sleep through that deviled hour and straight through until morning.
I need a trojan horse: a sleeping pill disguised as something else. Striding through the front gates of Sleep, joyously pulled by its only inhabitant. Then, when I am asleep, I can open the gates wide. Give entrance to the army of exhaustion I have amassed outside and finally, blissfully rest.
— jthrill
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