Sleepless in Northern Canada

Some years ago, I read a short story about a woman who could not get to sleep. Throughout the tale, the woman spends her time pacing her apartment while wondering which of her friends across the city are awake too.

At the time that I read the story, I thought that it had nothing to do with me, and that it probably never would. But as I get older, being awake in the night has become a common problem for me too.

Midnight passes and so does two am. On the worst nights, I find myself looking at the clock to see that it’s four am and then six, as I wonder whether I shouldn’t just get up.  

Having a phone is never helpful on sleepless nights. There are a squillion articles online about what to do when you can’t sleep, and of course, in the midst of all this scrolling, my mind becomes ever more active. I begin to wonder if I’ll ever sleep again.

I have tried a few different remedies, none of which seem to work. Holding onto sleep has become more difficult too. Light and noise jar me awake. I now wear earplugs and sometimes sleep with an old bandana tied around my head. My boyfriend calls it “the rock-and-roll-way to sleep with your head in a bucket.”

When scrolling through the internet at four in the morning, I sometimes find ads for those ostrich-head pillows suggested for me. If you haven’t seen them, it’s basically a big grey pillow that covers your head, with a hole for your mouth and two near your ears so you can insert your hands if you like, presumably to further muffle any noise. I’ve come across a photo of a woman wearing one, sprawled on the floor of her grocery store, canned goods scattered around her. The photo makes it look as if she has blacked out in mid-shop, and wonder if that’s really all it would take for me to get a decent night’s sleep. I imagine myself wearing one and napping (napping!) through my break at work, curled up atop the dryer in the rear liquor room.

Because of all these sleepless nights, I have become my own gremlin. When I wake the next morning after a handful of hours of sleep, I have to ask myself what I did the night before. Sometimes I emptied the dishwasher or popped out in the middle of a moonless night to get the mail. Though its exponentially more likely that I ate the last slice of pizza.

While I lie awake, I watch my partner drop off to sleep with a sort of envy that I never imagined feeling. How is it that some people can fall asleep anywhere? It’s as if he can shut off his mind like a light switch, while I lay awake thinking about things that don’t matter. Did I shut the garage door? And if not, why wouldn’t I venture downstairs in my bare feet to check?  There’s nothing like a blast of cold air to the face to convince you that you’re probably never getting to sleep.

I’ve never thought I’d resent someone for something that body does naturally. But even on long plane rides, while the person next to me slumbers and I stare at the ceiling, I sometimes fantasize about playing a pair of cymbals so that I can wake a person that I don’t even know.

The older I get, the more friends I have that commiserate with me about their own sleep struggles. Together we talk about the things that work and the things that don’t. Though mostly it’s just good to know that I’m not awake alone. That somewhere across the city, someone I hold dear is suffering too.

The World’s Largest Crossword Puzzle. Lviv, Ukraine.