I've never been a sound sleeper. The smallest sound can pull me out of a deep slumber, and sometimes I feel like I wake up immediately before something that would have woken me up. My foil has always been a wonderful spouse that can sleep through a carpet bombing. Sometimes, when I wake up in a frenzy due to a sound (or right before it), her steady breathing calms me down and I can eventually find sleep again. This being said, I write this to describe something that happened about a year ago.
Deep winter had set in in Minnesota. As I've descended deeper into my adulthood, I've definitely noticed the effects of the changing of seasons in a much more dramatic way. Unrelenting, icy cold mornings. Showering in the dark, shivering in my cold car on my way into a fluorescent-lit office, and leaving when it was dark again. The same thing for months on end. The holidays bring with them a sort of artificial joy that helps while away a few of these cold weeks, but once the fun of the New Year's arrival ebbs away, I'm left trapped under the unrelenting cloak of winter. The worst of the effects I experience are a sort of seasonal bipolarity. I'm alternatingly exhausted or hot-wired at absolutely inappropriate times. After a few years in this merry-go-round, I started to realize that sleepless nights were only exacerbating the problem. Getting a solid night's sleep became an obsession.
I'd do anything to chase the proverbial rabbit. The strange, effusive energy of a confused internal clock would sear through a massive dose of melatonin. I'd drink slurries of teas, spray my pillows with "sleep potions," and failing anything else, attempt to booze my restless brain into submission. Nothing really seemed to work. My normal "sleep" pattern seemed to be falling into an uneasy unconsciousness somewhere between 10 and midnight and then waking up when the furnace kicked in (or the house settled) around 3:30 am. I would usually wake with a start, heart racing, fight-or-flight response in high gear. I'd attempt to read my Kindle and find a way to calm myself down to hopefully catch an hour or two of sweet relief before another gray, fatigue-numbed day would begin.
It was around January of last year when things started to get really bad for me.
It was a night like any other. I had just woken up in a highly-agitated state, my senses in high gear. We have 2 cats that often cannonball around the house, so hearing some noises is never much of a concern. I'd assumed that something about the cats' normal early-morning gymnastics had woken me and laid back to hear their frenzied meowing. None came. In fact, I remember being quite unnerved by how quiet it had become. I heard the refrigerator downstairs kick in, and figured that my pineal gland was just rebelling against me again.
That's when I heard a knock.
It was a slow, steady rapping, against what sounded like the front door of our house. I would have dismissed it as the house settling, but it was just too... deliberate. I pictured a leather-gloved hand doing the deed. I remember my heart racing so quickly that I knew I'd be lucky to get a doze in by the time my alarm kicked in. I assumed it was the house settling and laid still, weighing the relative merits of running downstairs in my underwear brandishing the nearest blunt object. The cats remained silent, and after an hour, I was wondering if a quick dose of PM Painkiller would help me get a precious few moments of mind-nourishing sleep.
The next night, I was in a semi-conscious haze when I heard the same knocking. Or I thought I did. To the best of my recollection, I was in an uneasy doze. I may have imagined it. But the result was the same. After a massive shot of adrenaline, there was no way I'd be sleeping until I tried my next witch's brew experimentation the following evening.
After several more nights of the same troubling sequence, I was ready to write it off. I'd get used to it. After all, I had to be imagining it. I thought about discussing it with my better half but decided to let it slide. I didn't want her to worry on account of my insomnia-addled imagination. Furthermore, I was half-worried that the affects of the season were finally taking their toll, and I didn't want to give her any reason to suggest that I was really losing it. Then it might be actually be true.
I started to get more aggressive with my self medication around the time it became harder to deny that something truly bizarre was occurring. I heard the storm door opening before a much more deliberate knock. The familiar, popping shriek of the door's gas cylinder, the shifting of the cheap door against its chintzy mounts. And then the knocks. Always three, very firm knocks. And as always, I'd wait for the next move. The door would be kicked down. Or I'd hear the security system kick in, alerting that a door had been opened. At the same time, I really felt like I had to get to the bottom of this. But again, I didn't want to let on. I was just being crazy after all. In the ensuing week, I did my best to ignore what was now becoming a nightly occurrence. It was never at the exact same time, but always fell somewhere between 2 and 4 am, before which point I'd been in a fitful state of semi-slumber.
For better or worse, it wasn't long until I was forced to confront the situation.
It was another weeknight. After another stagnant day at work, another unmemorable commute home, and another night simultaneously anticipating and dreading bed time, I washed down a pair of PM Painkillers with a tall shot of whiskey. I crawled into bed and let the weight of medicated sleep slowly pull me under. As with every night, I hoped that I'd wake up at my alarm, refreshed and magically over the knocking-induced paranoia that had deprived my mind and body of its most vital sustenance.
If I recall, it was a brutally cold night, and I'd pulled a feather comforter over my normal litany of blankets. I woke up at around 3:40 am. I was in my normally agitated state, but I remember taking solace in the fact that I must have just been too warm. As I made these rationalizations, however, I just couldn't find a sense of calm. The dose of bush-league barbiturate I'd taken faded under a wave of adrenaline. And there it was. A firm, steady rapping. And this time it was on the bedroom door. I could hear the cheap pressboard of the hollow core flexing and the echo of the impact in the room. I paused for a moment, shocked that my wife didn't even stir. I threw the blankets aside, clenched my fists and charged.
I was ready to face a minotaur with my bare hands, but nothing was there. There I stood, with the bedroom door open, enveloped by a suddenly deafening silence, broken only by the sleeping sounds of my wife. I shut the door as quietly as I could and proceeded to exhaustively search our house. It wasn't like a silly horror movie either. I turned all of the lights on, opened all of the closets, looked under the beds and found nothing. The locks were set, and even the cats were content to watch me tear the house apart, staring on with their standard calm bemusement.
I was awoken the following night by the same knocking. I once again got up, ready for a fight. And once again, I found nothing. I finally asked my wife if she'd heard anything the night before. Of course, she hadn't.
It was at this point that things were starting to really affect me. My temper was getting the best of me. Perceived transgressions at work would send me into a boiling rage that I would try to ride out in the quiet of my cubicle. I found myself wishing that a wave of fatigue would wash over me and that I could abscond with a conference room for a 30-minute nap. But it seemed that my body had switched into "always on" mode. Weekends were the worst. Without the promise of 8 hours of artificial "purpose" ahead of me, I'd wake up to the knocking late Friday night, and end up laying awake as the sun came up. I'd make a futile attempt at sleep as the sun rose and long after. If I was lucky, I could catch a drunken nap on Sunday afternoon, only to come out of my fog to the dread that bed time was but a short hour or two away. I would continue to attempt self medication in the vain hopes that I could somehow steal a good night's sleep.
I ignored the knocking for a few nights, laying wide awake with my fists clenched. I asked my wife if she'd noticed anything again, and I felt like she was starting to suspect something. It was at this point that I decided to take drastic measures. With a fistful of PM Painkillers and a heavy pour of boxed red wine, I retired to the guest room, claiming that I was having some indigestion and might need the bathroom a few times. As I lay my head down, I felt the delicious rush of medicated sleep take hold of me, certain that this would be the night that I'd make it all the way.
I wouldn't be so lucky. I awoke to a knocking on the guest room door. This time, my body's meager attempts to cut through the medicated haze failed. I lay with a head that felt like it was stuffed with cotton and a body enfeebled. And then it happened. Another knock. I stumbled out of bed, hitting the floor with a thud that surely woke up my better half. I staggered to the door and clumsily pulled it open, only to see the same empty hallway, bathed in the dim light of the streetlight in our alley. I returned to bed and let the remaining sleeping chemicals do their work. My wife, once again, had heard nothing.
This story ends on a bit of a sad note. After a particularly rough day at work (undoubtedly due to my short fuse), I opened the intra-office instant messenger and penned a missive to one of my office buddies about my manager. I fired one message after another about how inept he was, topped off by a few lurid speculations at the ineptitude of his home and sex life. It was after the satisfaction of delivering a good thrashing that I realized my insomnia-addled brain must have misfired. Instead of opening the window for my buddy, I had clicked my manager's. All of the messages had gone to him. Needless to say, I was lucky to be dismissed without facing further repercussions. Before heading home to break the news to my better half, I stopped at a local watering hole to absorb some liquid courage. After taking myself to far beyond the legal limit, I decided to call my wife for a ride. Imagine her confusion seeing me there, alone, and inebriated to the point of slurring my language.
The night did not end well. I ended up moving back in with my parents. I assumed I'd be employed after a short and gratifying job search. Sadly, I tanked the first few interviews I lined up, and after that point, the opportunities seemed to dry up. The only good news is that the knocking didn't follow me to my parents' house. And as winter released its icy grip, I found myself being able to rest again. I settled into an uneasy stability as spring gave way to summer.
Still, as I sit here today, my relationship with my wife is only deteriorating. I am considering taking up menial employment before what's left of my savings dries up, and I can only say that I'm ashamed to be relying upon my parents' largesse, despite my mother's insistence that she loves having me around.
Submitted January 20, 2016 at 09:07AM by Calkky http://ift.tt/1T2STD3 nosleep
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