Week Three: Perfect Illusion

“If anyone here believes in telekinesis, raise my hand.”

— Kurt Vonnegut.

I can hear dogs barking but the room is too quiet, it’s too hot but I need the weight of the blankets to sleep, the sheets smell weird and I can’t get the pillows right and there’s light coming through the window. The more I can’t sleep the more anxious I get about the sleep I’m missing. I hate snoozing anywhere but my own bed. Other people’s houses are the worst, they have strange sounds and smells and they just don’t feel right. You wouldn’t expect it, but some of the best sleep of my life has been in the back of my truck at a trailhead with all the windows open. It’s a safe perch in there, with all my own bedding, the cool breeze on my face. But even in my own room at home I have bad nights, especially when I’m all wound up before going to sleep, coming home from a concert or a dinner party or the like, my ears ringing and the anxiety buzzing. Sometimes even when I have perfect conditions (no light, only the sounds of the forest, every window thrown open) my mind still spins and makes me feel dizzy. My brain kaleidoscopes between images too fast for me to keep up with, it feels like watching that horrible boat scene from Willy Wonka for nine hours. I’m so tired but I can’t truly sleep, I’m ping-ponging back and forth between dream and wake, on edge the whole night. Basically, it sucks. Luckily when I have the conditions right, I usually sleep really well. That makes for tricky cohabitation with a significant other though, at their place I don’t really sleep and then I feel tired and nauseous and irritable the next day and not really inclined to be around them. I’ve tried melatonin, benadryl, valerian root (yuck), hot tea, and nothing seems to work other than finally being exhausted enough on the fourth night that I sleep soundly for one night before starting the cycle over again. I like sleeping with long sleeves and pants (bare skin is too much brain input), I like sleeping with the room at subarctic temperatures (so I can pile on the blankets, helps with dizziness), I like sleeping with specific pillows (none of that fluffy down stuff for me, I don’t understand why anyone would buy a pillow that flattens as soon as you put your head on it). But I’ve found that literally no one on earth shares these exact preferences with me, so I’m still working out how exactly to manage sleep overs. It turns out that waking up looking and acting like an angry wolverine isn’t conducive to lasting relationships.

Sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m “bad enough” to seek help, for sleep problems or for any mental or physical ailment or with tasks I’m struggling with. I constantly compare myself to others, both my positive and negative attributes, and for some reason I always compare myself to the best. Like, I’m a student and a skier and I like playing the guitar, and I’m pretty good at all of those things. But I compare my academic skills to the most crazed of brainiacs, my skiing skills to the sponsored athletes, and my guitar skills to professional musicians. So I’m always falling short. It’s tricky, because individually I know could become the best at any one thing, so I know my upper skill limit is unbounded, but in reality I do a lot of different things and so there’s not enough time and energy to be the best at anything. Logically that makes sense, but in day to day I forget and feel like I’m constantly underachieving. This “never being good enough” manifests in a lot of ways. I feel bad going to talk with my therapist because in reality, I’m functional, and there are other people on her wait list that are probably less functional and more deserving of that time slot (but I’m selfish and I’m keeping it). I may have gotten really anxious and had to leave when our three person card game turned into five because it got too loud and overwhelming, but hey, at least I have friends. I only eat maybe ten different food items, all other foods have the wrong texture or taste or I’m afraid of them because they’re “bad”, but hey, I’m maintaining my weight and eating really healthy. I might space out in every conversation and have the working memory of a goldfish, but hey, I made it through university with a 3.8 GPA. Like in my mind to deserve help, I need to have zero friends and to be malnourished and to drop out of college, it’s totally messed up. Anyway, enough of the pity party, I’ve got to go open every window to prepare my cryo chamber for optimal sleep.