Insomnia

 

The thing about 'Insomnia', the song, by Faithless, right, is that the late (and I mean genuinely late, not whatever Trump means when he calls Hannibal Lecter 'late') Maxi Jazz was a middle-aged man when he wrote it. Because that song is about what it's like to experience insomnia, the condition, in your forties. The Corrs were right about what it's like at the other end of the age spectrum: 'it really doesn't matter...'cause when tomorrow comes, we can do it all again.' Well, bully for you, kids, but it isn't like that when you're my age. 

When you're my age insomnia is a horrible limbo condition, an eternally recurring purgatory of hopelessness, a merry-go-round of lying down, closing your eyes, trying to sleep and failing because of course you can't try to go to sleep, you either sleep or you don't, there is no 'try', it isn't something you can will yourself to do because the act of willing yourself to do something precludes relaxation, so the carousel goes round again and you get off the fibreglass horse and you sit up and read, or draw, or watch YouTube or play video games to break state, to distract yourself, and if you're lucky an hour later your eyelids will start feeling a little bit heavy and you can lie down, let them close and slip past the nightwatchman but more likely no, psych, you feel the anxiety rising and realise you're trying again after all and the fibreglass horses are laughing at you behind their painted-on eyes and you may as well rise and try another trick and see if that gets you past go, or else you wind up like me, now, heavy-lidded but restless, eyes like pissholes in the snow, too tired to face the day but too wired to wave it bye-bye. Insomnia sucks. 

I should have known this would happen. I was overdue. Anxiety drives my insomnia and this week I've been making some proper moves to try and sort my life out for the first time in ages, applying for things, polishing my resume, arranging meetings to discuss new things I'm working on (of which more in due time, dear reader, I promise) and so with tedious fucking inevitability of course the first night this week I had to relax because I had stuff on the calendar today would be the first night that I couldn't, the first night I wouldn't be asleep by ten and up the next day with the lark. I mean I'm up now, yes, but I already was when Vaughan-Williams' chum came on the scene, not that there's much chance of hearing him ascend above the sound of drunks and sirens in my part of town. But even they can't drown the laughter of the gods who glimpsed my diary. Hypnos, Morpheus, those lords of sleep, those well-known bastards. 

I can't get no sleep.