An Autobiography of an Insomniac

On a good morning, I wipe the drool off my face. When I sleep a real sleep it always collects in the corners of my mouth. Real sleep is hard to come by now. At least at night, when I’m supposed to be sleeping. Blame it on the early twenties, the late night screens, or the irregular work schedule, it’s made me ten pounds heavier. It’s made me perpetually obsessed with these ten pounds. I spend hours before bed fantasizing about French fries, French skies and my little understanding of the French language. I want to desperately to appear cultured, but I can’t seem to get out of my bed and explore, despite my glaring lack of sleep.

I really don’t think my sleep hygiene has anything to do with any of these things. I think it has to do with betrayal. With my disrespect for myself, these deep holes in myself. They exist as holes because I know there are voids in the world and I know that I was meant to fill them. That’s why, at 18 years and 3 months old, I decided to tattoo a map of the world on my back. When strangers stop me and they ask me why I made this permanent marking on my skin I tell them, simply, “I want to change the world.” They don’t have time for me to tell them: “But, it’s much more complicated than that.” Yes, I do want to change the world. But it’s more. I’ve always been carrying the entire weight of the world in between my shoulder blades. These conflicts seem to take place between my vertebrae. For awhile, I believed that when I sat up straight and heard the cracking all the way down, that it was crushing these problems and releasing their tension. Now, at 22, I know this noise is just the joints releasing nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide.  Humans are made of 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 10% hydrogen, 3% nitrogen, and then some other stuff.  But my body is something different. I’ve got organs and bones but chemically I’m made up of ticking clocks. Of never enough time. Always too much time. My structure is caring too much and too little simultaneously. It is being ten pounds overweight but wearing a crop top anyway. My core dedicates itself in finding the beauty in sadness. It is living this life chasing happiness. And finding it. Finding it in notes from strangers in used copies of novels. In the way a fresh fallen snow absorbs the sound of the world. The way photographs fade over time, somehow making them worth more with the loss of their vibrancy. I hope that happens to me.