I could hear the ocean in the background, working relentlessly, creating wave after wave, fulfilling its role as nature’s metronome. While I listened to the ocean work, I spent my nights alone reading fiction or streaming movies and drinking cold beer. I would wake up on the floor in the morning, a book or a laptop open, discombobulated and, at first, curious why I didn’t walk the twenty feet to my bed.
But I soon understood. I discovered I wasn’t a good sleeper and trying to sleep in a bed made it even harder for me. Something about planning to fall asleep ruined the whole process. A bed was, apart from the sexual implications, a symbol for sleep and once I was aware that I was contributing to some tradition, I couldn’t sleep anymore. I would just lie there for hours, hoping sleep would come and it hardly came. I could feel my body hunkering down into the sheets, tired, worn out, hoping desperately for sleep to come but my mind was too controlling to let my body do what it needed to do.
The best sleeps I ever had were ones in which I was able to trick my mind. I set up on the floor to read or watch a film and sometimes my mind would make a mistake and let me fall asleep because I wasn’t in a bed. But then my mind would get smarter and recognize my intentions and I would have to try the chair on the patio or the top of my kitchen table or next to a bush outside. It’s hard to outsmart the suspicious mind, especially when it’s your own. Sleep was a battle that I was constantly losing.
-A tiny excerpt from my upcoming novel: Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?
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