I have never been a good sleeper.
It’s quite humiliating, when you have to admit that. It is after all not so much a skill but a natural response your body has every 12 hours or so. It’s been the story ever since I could remember. While obviously being a cherubic gift of graciousness in the day, for my parents, getting me to go to bed was a completely different story. No matter how many books, cassette recordings or soothing goodnights; I would invariably end up getting out of bed and walking into the sitting room to say indignantly,
“How come you can have ice cream and watch tv and I can’t.”
“When you’re older and no longer living with us then you can do all these” I would be told while being quick marched back into the dark isolation of the bedroom.
This carried on throughout my life. Every sleepover I was the last to fall asleep. Even now, everywhere I am, I’m usually still awake long after the reading lights have been turned off. When I shared a room with my brother I would hear him, a much younger child with sleep apnea doze off, his snores as loud as an uptown Jamaican driving his ATV in Holywell. They were a reminder of how I couldn’t emulate that state, constantly kept from the steady rhythm of sleep. Even after he got better and finally slept silently, I couldn’t drop off at the speed that everyone else seemed to.
I hate the term ‘overactive imaginations.’ It feels condescending, like some sort of creative/intellectual superiority that they use to justify the fact that they can’t get to sleep. Some people see the fact that they can’t sleep as a badge of honour, proof that their brain is just so special that sleep becomes a hindrance. Really, those people are idiots. Sleep is such an important factor in development for the brain and body. It can improve our mental health, your metabolism. It can decrease your chance of heart disease, stroke and even Type 2 diabetes. You aren’t an artist, tortured by insomnia because the world just NEEDS you to be awake constantly, to share your genius with the nocturnal world. You probably just need a better mattress.
When I eventually fall asleep, it’s as if my body rejects the process completely. I am not a stagnant sleeper. I do not lie down with maybe some light tossing and turning. When I was younger, my teeth would grind as if they were a heavy duty piece of factory equipment. I would talk in my sleep, carrying out full conversations with myself while unconscious. I woke up one morning while I was on holiday to my family asking if I was ok.
“Of course,” I said, “why wouldn’t I be?”
I was then informed that I woke everyone in the house by screaming in the dead of the night, while being completely knocked out. And the duppy experiences don’t stop there. Along with seeing my dead dog in my doorway one night, a sleep paralysis shadow once sat on my chest and wouldn’t let me move while it screamed in my face. However, I was well prepared for that Exorcist level experience because of the afore mentioned little brother.
A more recent occurrence is sleep walking. Since I turned 17, I would find myself awake and sometimes standing outside my bedroom door, thoroughly convinced that I had to meet someone or do something. It’s usually not terrible, as I hardly even leave my bedroom but it can be problematic when I’m not in a familiar environment. Once, the sleepwalking took me into the condemned bathroom of an old Jamaican great house. I woke up standing on the metal base of a lawn chair, thoroughly convinced I was late for school in the middle of summer.
While I sleep, it feels as if my body is literally trying to manage a schedule that my brain hasn’t even made. The fact that my subconscious is more social than my awake self is proof enough that I need to go out more.
Problems with sleeping are very common. My entire flat in my first year university accommodation bonded over how we never slept and I wasn’t even the worst offender. A lot of people find trouble falling asleep. Also, a lot of people suddenly become experts on sleep when you tell them you’ve had a restless night:
Drink tea, don’t drink tea, exercise to get yourself tired, don’t exercise too late or you’ll be filled with adrenaline, look at the moon, don’t expose yourself to too much light, read a book, throw yourself down a flight of stairs, go for a bath with a toaster… you get the drill. I’ve tried it all. Nothing has helped. Well, except maybe Wray and Nephew white rum but I feel that developing that into a nightly habit might cause some problems further down the line.
Whether I’m a night owl or an insomniac, I do actually love sleep when it eventually comes. It’s a long distant friend who I don’t feel awkward about seeing, no matter how long it’s been since I last saw them. A lot of lamenting adults would tell a younger Charlie refusing to go to bed;
“Oh, I WISH someone would just tell me to go to bed!”
And so, dear reader, I give you permission to get some sleep. I know I’m going to.