Thursday, February 02, 2006

There are, in your estimation, at least 40 thousand sleep aids available on the market -from the hippy-dippy homeopathic to the high-class prescription types. As you stared at your kitchen counter, covered from end to end in half-empty pill bottles and silver foil shards, the ever present impulse to simply hit yourself over the head with a frying pan surfaced again.

Somnatrol. Dromias. RevitaSleep. Ambiatol. Melatrol. Serotonin Ex. Nutranetics Liquid Sleep. Seditol. Aluna. Somnex. Lunesta. Trazadone. Calmes Forte. Unisom. Tylenol PM. NyQuil. Benedryl. Imovane. You’d tried them all. Only your fiancé and general phobia of pills prevented you from mixing a cocktail of vodka, gin, and one of everything on the counter if for nothing else than the 30 hours of dreamless, relaxed sleep before your liver failed and your body shut down completely.

If nothing else, the sneaking fear that [G]god might be more than a mass hallucination prevented you from testing the bounds of modern medicine by taking more than one at a time. In all of your misadventures with religion you’d yet to find one that thought suicide was a cheerful Sunday night activity. Well, barring the crazy ones.

Settling on the trendy but effective combination of prescription pain killers and black coffee you downed both 12 oz mug and friendly white pills in a single gulp and padded back into the living room, bumping painfully into the pile of reference material you’d been disregarding.

Most chronic insomniacs watch television – or, at least, that’s what you’d heard. You, however, couldn’t bring yourself to switch it on, despite the late hour and the lack of anything better to distract yourself. Instead, you leaned forward, groping for your jacket pocket.

As cigarette smoke curled, disappearing into the residual neon streetlight, you stretched your legs over the couch cushions, and booted up your connection to the world, blandly anticipating the flood of junk mail and advertising about to burn your retinas. For all the things in life that, upon close inspection, became mundane and disappointing, the internet had yet to fail you. No matter how many hours you sat, chasing the elusive end, it never came. There was always a new stretch of undiscovered information at your fingertips. Tonight, however, even its enigma couldn’t hold your attention.

The distractions came more frequently lately and you found yourself, head thrown back, eyes closed tightly against the moonlight, fighting to drown the amorphous, nameless thoughts that threatened to surface. The well-adjusted might have explored exactly what it was that upset you – what trigger manifested itself in sleeplessness and addiction - but you considered it easier to ignore it until it went away. Taking a deep, despondent breath, you glanced at the unapologetic neon glow of the stereo clock and watched it’s numeric flashing. 4:02.

“Fuck it.”

posted by Kay @ 1:59 PM