On Wednesday mornings Cartter starts school an hour later than usual, but I always wake up earlier. When I look at the clock and it reads 6:20, I think, “Oh, good, I can go back to sleep for an hour and a half.” Then I lie there awake. Any other weekday, I’d think, “Oh, good, I don’t have to get up for another thirty minutes,” and the next moment I’d be waking up again with Cartter in the room telling me it’s time to go. Sleep approaches sneakily, when I’m not expecting her, when I’m just staying in bed to delay the inevitable walk into the kitchen and the commute across town. When I greedily anticipate an extra hour on Wednesday, she goes missing. Only by surrendering to getting none do I ever enjoy enough sleep.
Sleep and procrastination are natural allies. Lying on the couch or in bed I’ll think, “I just need to rest here for a minute before I get around to those household chores.” Then sleep creeps up and says, “Stay a while longer.” But how many times have I nearly fallen asleep with the light on, only to drag myself to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and end up lying in the dark wondering where sleep went off to?
Sleep is like a cruel, narcissistic lover. You tell her to wait just a minute for you, and she vanishes. You tell her you want her, and she turns away. The more desperate you get, the more she’s turned off, but if you say you don’t need her, she can’t get enough of you. Sometimes, I get so fed up with sleep blowing hot and cold that I take her by force. I slip her a little pill and have my way with her. Disgust is my only reward, though. When you try to keep sleep in a cage and feed her pills, she just spites you by becoming ugly and weak. You can’t possess her.
Wooing sleep is a fool’s errand too. She spurns rituals and meditative practices meant to lure her like the dog rebuffs a child’s pleas for affection, opting instead to rest her head in the master’s lap while he sits reading. Like a bitch, she’s attracted to self-assuredness.
We misspeak when we say that we “get” sleep or we “catch a nap.” We can lose sleep, or we can surrender to her. That is all that’s in our power. Time is her father, and she passes through us like he does – unevenly and without our noticing. Trying to catch sleep is as useless as staring at the clock in the DMV wishing for the time to move more quickly. Time and sleep come and go at their leisure, not ours, and they leave us with bits of dreams and memories flashing like reflected sunlight off the surface of a deep blue ocean of forgetfulness. We rise in the morning as if eight hours passed in an instant. A song playing in a restaurant reminds us of a day from the past, and we think, “Where did the last ten years go? It’s like they didn’t exist.” To catch sleep would be to go back in time, to live an impossible dream. I love you, sleep, you sweet, beautiful, cruel, fickle seductress. Fuck you.
The Raging Elitist 