On Sleep
This is an essay I started months ago. I don't know what I think of it, but for what it's worth, here 'tis. I can't over-state how much the thing that my mother says in it, about how she hates being told what to do, resonated with me. I think something more is required to do it justice. But for now:
ON SLEEP
“Sleep is where I’m a Viking,” –Ralph Wiggums
Last month, my boyfriend and I visited Washington, D.C., for the wedding of a high-school friend of his. On our way up to the hotel room, Eric remarked that after a long day of travel, he was looking forward to a sound night’s sleep. I said I was feeling beat, too, and anticipating the same.
“But you always sleep well,” he said.
“I guess I do,” I said, then paused a beat, a new thought forming in my head. “Are you jealous?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
It's true, I sleep well. I also sleep long. If there is nowhere I have to be in the morning, I can snooze for so long it almost scares me. I’ll roll over, mash my face into the pillow, and push off again, chasing tales of dream. I’m like a glutton; I’ll keep on sleeping until I can’t sleep any more. I learn the noises of my alarm clocks and grow adept at tickling their snooze buttons without really waking. I can subsist in a state of half-sleep, resetting a snooze for hours—conscious enough to be irritated by the noise, but not conscious enough to decide to end it by rising.
I used to hate my above-average need for sleep. It seemed a kind of moral failing, a sign of weakness, laziness, and determination to waste the only life I’ll ever be given. Every morning I’d awake with a jolt of self-reproach for having slept so long. I had wasted time, now I’d have to hurry, and there would be no one to blame but myself. ‘What’s wrong with you?,’ I’d think. ‘Why can’t you train yourself to get up on time, like an ordinary person?’
While I flagellated myself with these thoughts, though, I forgot the obvious answer to my own punishing self-questions, which is: I adore sleep. Not only do I sleep longer than many people, I also look forward to sleep. Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I think to myself, ‘only x many hours, and I’ll be able to be back here again.’ The paradox of sleep is that sometimes its pleasures pass unnoticed, because the loss of consciousness that is so charming about it is, precisely, a loss of consciousness. That is why I love to snooze. That is why I haven’t put thicker curtains on my sunny bedroom windows yet. I like it when the light wakes me at five, so I can roll groggily to one side, check the clock, and revel in allowing myself to slip back under for three…more…delicious…hours. Sometimes I think I’m in love with sleep. Sleep is my dusky paramour, one who never asks anything of me. I’m safe when I’m sleeping. Perfectly at ease.
As a child, I put my toys to sleep. My mother tells a story about buying me a tricycle to encourage athleticism, only to have me swaddle it in blankets and put it down for a nap. I found a box of maxi pads and fashioned self-adhesive sleeping bags for my Fisher-Price people. Once after a long bedtime-story, calming-down session, I jumped up in a panic, remembering that I’d forgotten to put my toys to bed, and insisting that I had to go do this, now. My mother asked me please to wait until the morning. “But they’ll be tired,” I cried, full of compassionate anguish.
Being tired has always been a fear of mine. I suppose I got it from my mother, who is also afraid of being tired, and also loves to sleep. She gets panicky when her sleeping schedule is threatened, and I suppose I do too. Sleep is my kingdom, my right, the place I go just for me, the place I’m comfortable in. The place where I’m free: that might be what it comes down to. The world is scary. We need sleep, and lots of it, to be up to the world. I imagine that my mom has fantastic dreams. I believe this on the strength of a few that she’s told me, which are vivid and wild. I have fantastic dreams too, a lot of the time. I enjoy my dreams. I respect the place they come from. I imagine that I have a deep self and that it’s important, wiser and calmer than the self on the surface. I imagine that it possesses everything I need to live, and is beyond disturbance. It will take care of me if I let it. I just have to give it time and space to be heard. I have to give it sleep, and sleep somewhat attentively, too. I have to keep the din of other people to a minimum.
I went home last week, and during a late-night conversation over tea in the kitchen, my mother said to me, “I can’t stand being told what to do.” This simple statement broke open in my mind like a lightning bolt, illuminating dark corners: it was true. I’d never heard her say so before. I’d never thought it to myself before. But it summed up so much about my mother, tiny points of stubbornness or uncaring that I’d once ascribed to something else, anxiety or ignorance or unfashionableness. When the fact was this: my mother hates being told what to do. And off went a smaller lightning bolt, which told me: I hate being told what to do, too. Often I deal with this by trying to do everything before-hand and well, so that I don’t have to be asked. This makes me not appear to loathe being told what to do as much as I do actually.
I think that my mother’s and my fondness for sleep has a direct connection to our dislike for taking orders. Example: I resent it when I dream about work. I resent the encroachment of the job I do for money into the space of my subconscious. I want that space to be holy and apart, consecrated to Important Things. So when I wake up realizing that I have been dreaming about the personality foibles of the CEO, or how I should have done more with the project I was working on last week before the weekend, I’m grumpy, and I feel quotidian, not special the way I like.
My mother and I both need to feel free. Enjoying a feeling of freedom is, for both of us, a struggle. Sleep is anarchy. In sleep, there’s freedom.
Sleep may not be the boldest solution to this problem of liberty, but at least it costs nothing and doesn’t hurt anybody. And it’s refreshing too!
“I wish I could be like you, though,” I said to my boyfriend. “If I could get by on six hours? I’d get so much more done!” It’s true, and yet—the first part? I didn’t really mean it. I’m a sleeper. Insisting on sleep is insisting on myself. I mean, there’s escapist sleeping and insouciant sleeping, and even depressed sleeping (“dread of the day,” as the wisest psychiatrist I’ve known once called it), but for the most part I am delighted about my ability to sleep, and to derive pleasure from it. Because I appreciate, now, that not everyone can.
ON SLEEP
“Sleep is where I’m a Viking,” –Ralph Wiggums
Last month, my boyfriend and I visited Washington, D.C., for the wedding of a high-school friend of his. On our way up to the hotel room, Eric remarked that after a long day of travel, he was looking forward to a sound night’s sleep. I said I was feeling beat, too, and anticipating the same.
“But you always sleep well,” he said.
“I guess I do,” I said, then paused a beat, a new thought forming in my head. “Are you jealous?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
It's true, I sleep well. I also sleep long. If there is nowhere I have to be in the morning, I can snooze for so long it almost scares me. I’ll roll over, mash my face into the pillow, and push off again, chasing tales of dream. I’m like a glutton; I’ll keep on sleeping until I can’t sleep any more. I learn the noises of my alarm clocks and grow adept at tickling their snooze buttons without really waking. I can subsist in a state of half-sleep, resetting a snooze for hours—conscious enough to be irritated by the noise, but not conscious enough to decide to end it by rising.
I used to hate my above-average need for sleep. It seemed a kind of moral failing, a sign of weakness, laziness, and determination to waste the only life I’ll ever be given. Every morning I’d awake with a jolt of self-reproach for having slept so long. I had wasted time, now I’d have to hurry, and there would be no one to blame but myself. ‘What’s wrong with you?,’ I’d think. ‘Why can’t you train yourself to get up on time, like an ordinary person?’
While I flagellated myself with these thoughts, though, I forgot the obvious answer to my own punishing self-questions, which is: I adore sleep. Not only do I sleep longer than many people, I also look forward to sleep. Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I think to myself, ‘only x many hours, and I’ll be able to be back here again.’ The paradox of sleep is that sometimes its pleasures pass unnoticed, because the loss of consciousness that is so charming about it is, precisely, a loss of consciousness. That is why I love to snooze. That is why I haven’t put thicker curtains on my sunny bedroom windows yet. I like it when the light wakes me at five, so I can roll groggily to one side, check the clock, and revel in allowing myself to slip back under for three…more…delicious…hours. Sometimes I think I’m in love with sleep. Sleep is my dusky paramour, one who never asks anything of me. I’m safe when I’m sleeping. Perfectly at ease.
As a child, I put my toys to sleep. My mother tells a story about buying me a tricycle to encourage athleticism, only to have me swaddle it in blankets and put it down for a nap. I found a box of maxi pads and fashioned self-adhesive sleeping bags for my Fisher-Price people. Once after a long bedtime-story, calming-down session, I jumped up in a panic, remembering that I’d forgotten to put my toys to bed, and insisting that I had to go do this, now. My mother asked me please to wait until the morning. “But they’ll be tired,” I cried, full of compassionate anguish.
Being tired has always been a fear of mine. I suppose I got it from my mother, who is also afraid of being tired, and also loves to sleep. She gets panicky when her sleeping schedule is threatened, and I suppose I do too. Sleep is my kingdom, my right, the place I go just for me, the place I’m comfortable in. The place where I’m free: that might be what it comes down to. The world is scary. We need sleep, and lots of it, to be up to the world. I imagine that my mom has fantastic dreams. I believe this on the strength of a few that she’s told me, which are vivid and wild. I have fantastic dreams too, a lot of the time. I enjoy my dreams. I respect the place they come from. I imagine that I have a deep self and that it’s important, wiser and calmer than the self on the surface. I imagine that it possesses everything I need to live, and is beyond disturbance. It will take care of me if I let it. I just have to give it time and space to be heard. I have to give it sleep, and sleep somewhat attentively, too. I have to keep the din of other people to a minimum.
I went home last week, and during a late-night conversation over tea in the kitchen, my mother said to me, “I can’t stand being told what to do.” This simple statement broke open in my mind like a lightning bolt, illuminating dark corners: it was true. I’d never heard her say so before. I’d never thought it to myself before. But it summed up so much about my mother, tiny points of stubbornness or uncaring that I’d once ascribed to something else, anxiety or ignorance or unfashionableness. When the fact was this: my mother hates being told what to do. And off went a smaller lightning bolt, which told me: I hate being told what to do, too. Often I deal with this by trying to do everything before-hand and well, so that I don’t have to be asked. This makes me not appear to loathe being told what to do as much as I do actually.
I think that my mother’s and my fondness for sleep has a direct connection to our dislike for taking orders. Example: I resent it when I dream about work. I resent the encroachment of the job I do for money into the space of my subconscious. I want that space to be holy and apart, consecrated to Important Things. So when I wake up realizing that I have been dreaming about the personality foibles of the CEO, or how I should have done more with the project I was working on last week before the weekend, I’m grumpy, and I feel quotidian, not special the way I like.
My mother and I both need to feel free. Enjoying a feeling of freedom is, for both of us, a struggle. Sleep is anarchy. In sleep, there’s freedom.
Sleep may not be the boldest solution to this problem of liberty, but at least it costs nothing and doesn’t hurt anybody. And it’s refreshing too!
“I wish I could be like you, though,” I said to my boyfriend. “If I could get by on six hours? I’d get so much more done!” It’s true, and yet—the first part? I didn’t really mean it. I’m a sleeper. Insisting on sleep is insisting on myself. I mean, there’s escapist sleeping and insouciant sleeping, and even depressed sleeping (“dread of the day,” as the wisest psychiatrist I’ve known once called it), but for the most part I am delighted about my ability to sleep, and to derive pleasure from it. Because I appreciate, now, that not everyone can.
posted by katherine | 3:19 PM
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