Sleep Aid

The phone alarm blasted into my brain like a jackhammer-tipped freight train. Out of context the chime could be described as sweet, even soothing, but the tone had been corrupted and now elicited only fury. I swung my legs out from under the cozy covers and fumbled my toes around to find my slippers. On they went. My first moment of triumph in the last four hours. It was eight o’ clock, I had been awake since four, and this was not normal.

For two years, I had been working for a creative advertising agency producing commercials, building websites, and generally crafting traps to capture customers for our clients. I was pretty good at it, but I had begun to despise it. Or rather, I had begun to despise the way I felt in the mornings. Between March and May I’d developed an inability to fall back asleep. 7:00am…6:00am…4:30am…if I cracked my eyes open, my brain would click on, the gears would start churning, and I knew there was no going back to sleep.

This new and stubborn insomnia was puzzling. It was also one heck of a bummer. I dug my sleep and I’ve always been pretty darn good at it too. Many years back, Arianna Huffington’s “Sleep Revolution” had shook shelves with her tales of proud sleeplessness, a bright badge of careerist identity, and the resultant megaburnout that inspired her relinquishing of the reins of her beautiful baby, the Huffington Post. I read it with sympathy in my heart and no relatability whatsoever. Sure, I was blown away by the research showing sleep impairment risks outweigh those of drunk driving. I was shocked to learn that most airline pilots were essentially DUI-ing us across the skies. But at the time, these felt like other people’s problems. Her tips and tricks were for them, not me. I never needed “go to bed” alarm-reminders. I never thought to charge my phone in the kitchen in order to keep off “the gram” in bed. I felt kindred with Arianna as a sleep expert as I read. My relationship with sleep was like Sonny and Cher. Until it was Sid and Nancy-ed.

I revisited some of the book for a refresh, but I wasn’t ready to admit I was in need of a revolution. Mostly because the cause of the insomnia was clear. I would tell myself, It’s the job. Client concerns are the culprit. Badly deployed web launches, sub par video product, and my overworked team griping incessantly has created this swirl of preoccupation and frustration. After each project I would obsess and replay the failure as I tried to drift to sleep. 

What could I have done differently? I asked myself.

No, fuck that, it’s on the client. My insomnia whipped back.

But damn, the problem needs solving regardless of blame…

Sometimes this cycle would keep me from falling asleep, sometimes it would wake me up, and sometimes it would serve me a sandwich. Stress had snuck inside my sanctuary and was stealing my sleep.

x x x

I woke early again. This morning my busy mind opted for a guilty retrospect. I thought about my ex-wife Kaity. I’d given her such grief about her work anxiety, always judging and criticizing her silly coping strategies. Kaity seemed to ratchet tight everything in her life she could control when her work life felt out of control. Her always crisp clothes and perfectly primped hair were a testament to the idea that if the outside looked good, the inside would somehow follow.

Kaity stress-bought decorative pillows and completely covered our bed with them. Wiry woolen Afghan fabrics, Southwestern weaves, Pemberton Pacific Northwest patterns–a beautiful canvas leaving no room for a single body. Every night we had to kick them all to the floor, and every morning she would pile ‘em back on, fussing until they were just right.

During one morning rebuild, I decided to press for a reason that justified this silly routine.

I stepped out of the bathroom to watch her work as I brushed my teeth. Leaning up against the door jamb with my mouth full of minty froth, I asked, “What’s the point of all these damn pillows? There’s no way to use them all. Most of them feel like old beards anyhow.” 

“I like things to look nice. What’s the big deal?” Kaity didn’t look up as she continued to primp. She plucked a long poofy cylinder off the floor. It appeared to be upholstered with dead grass. She gingerly placed it on the bed nestling it into the row she’d been stacking. She stepped back and cocked her head as if the angle promised some secret clue on precisely how many inches to the left it still needed to be nudged. She nudged it accordingly, poke-punched it gently on all sides, and then returned to the floor pile for another.

My brow was tightly furrowed, scowling with toothpaste dripping down my chin. “I dunno. Just seems like a lot of work for no reason.”

She whirled around and shot me a hot glare. “Since you’re not helping, you don’t get to have an opinion.”

I threw my hands up in truce and turned back into the bathroom to spit and rinse. Over the sound of the sink I heard her say, almost to herself; ”I can relax when things are nice and neat.”

I realized Kaity was able to quench her work worries with a perpetual loop of constructing and deconstructing ornamental pillow piles. Even though I’d seen the tactic as a strategic distraction at best, I had to admit, for her, it provided the desired effect.

x x x

In late March of 2021, a gap appeared between a web project project delivery and a video project launch, so I decided to take a four-day weekend road-trip to San Diego with my girlfriend Tara. I was certain this would solve my sleep problem: Four days of rest and sunshine with my sweetheart. It couldn’t fail.

Sure, I spent three thousand dollars planning a four day kamikaze vacation, but it really felt like the medicine took. I returned to work feeling pretty darn good. However, a week later, I lay wide awake at five o’ clock, yet again. I was right where I left off. All the usually blamable garbage was off the table: new clients weren’t baring their teeth (yet), no project deadlines loomed (yet), but somehow my brain was back to redlining the engine immediately upon awakening. Maybe it was something else. I began to wonder if my insomnia wasn’t being fueled by a different force entirely. 

As pink dawn crept up my walls I thought back to our San Diego road trip. There had been one particular stretch of quiet contentment on the drive back along interstate 8. The vast emptiness of the Imperial Sand Dunes insisting–you are free, you can do anything, you are delicate, you are small. I watched as Tara propped her bare feet up on the dash. She was still wearing her canary yellow bikini top and a pair of torn jean shorts, rejecting our return to reality.

“I just want to be a famous Instagram hiker. I want to hike everyday, and not work, and be outside where it’s nice all the time with the plants and the animals and the sunshine,” she said, staring out the window at the dunes. She absentmindedly played with her hair fiddling with her split ends.

“How are you gonna do that?” I asked.

“I’ll pay off my house, rent it out, buy a van, customize the inside like you see YouTubers do, and then go on hikes every day, posting it all to Instagram!”

I laughed. “Turn on, tune in, and drop out flower child! Sounds like quite the plan. Sure you’re not masking a bigger, deeper issue though?”

“Maybe. Or maybe you’re just jealous.” She gave me a wink and a shove. She poured the final flakes of salt and vinegar chips into her mouth, chased it with a long pull of Red Bull, and turned back to the desert landscape. 

x x x

Forty dawns and four hundred Zoom calls later, May came to an end. It was time for my month-long summer stay in Portland, Oregon. As part of a retirement income scheme, I’d helped my mom acquire a Tiny Home and rent it out on AirBnB. It was one part income strategy for her, and one part super summer vacation spot for me. Every year I’d make the drive up, and then hunker down in the dark blue mini Craftsman on wheels for a month to escape from the triple digit Arizona heat.

It was supposed to be an annual trip, but I missed the previous year due to the emergence of COVID-19. The pandemic had given everyone the same 2020 summer plans; binge Tiger King and figure out which furniture could be squatted and/or bench-pressed. Summer of 2021 brought the end of the first wave of infections, so I joined the world in deciding to drop guard and party in person with people once again.

I arrived in Portland feeling great. And then a week in, not so great. The insomnia was back.

As I woke up, my brain turned on as usual, but this time it didn’t immediately have a focus. I felt anxiety creeping in, but I noticed it was only taking hold of my body, not my thoughts. As it accelerated I could feel it searching for something to worry about.

As though astroprojected, I watched my mind catch up to the anxiety my body was having like a third-party observer. An inner monologue, slow and confused at first, was stumbling around looking for something, anything to accurately assign to the bodily feeling. It wanted something worthy of the pre-existing anxiety, something to be dubbed the origin of the anxiety. Then it found what it was looking for. And then I realized, I was truly fucked. Because this experience originated outside of my mind, I had no way to prevent it. No way to control it.

I thought back to Kaity and our pillowed bed. I had been no better than her. My attempts to outmaneuver my insomnia were no more evolved than her attempts to smother her issues with a perfect pillow pile.

And then, a wash of relief arrived. If my anxiety didn’t start inside my brain then I had no reason to grip the controls anymore. Just from surrendering and embracing this reality, I began to feel the tip of a true calm. I had never been in control of this subconscious force and I would never be in control of it. And if finding contentment no longer relied on wrestling control from my own thoughts, then maybe I could finally find peace in releasing it.

x x x

On the second Sunday with my mom, she asked if I would help her harvest squash from the garden. She had re-used the earth we dug out for the Tiny Home and built two 5x20x3 foot raised planting beds. Her botany degree was on full display, she’d grown tomatoes that looked like two fists, bell pepper vines that put fourth of July fireworks to shame, and “Dinosaur Kale” fit for the lizard kings themselves. She fed the entire neighborhood fresh veggies during the COVID-19 supply chain chaos, and now she was preparing to deploy a squash soup mason-jar masterpiece to drop on nearby doorsteps.

We each claimed a bed and began peeling back the blossoms to collect the meaty veggies, careful to dodge the spiny stems. I noticed a squash with a big black blotch on it. It had been too shrouded by the underbrush and the blight from the blossoms had infected the fruit. It was ruined.

“Mooom! Some of these are gross and bad,” I hollered across the yard as I exposed another rash of molded squash.

“More for the compost. Glad we got ‘em before the racoons did!” she yelled back.

“Aren’t you pissed they’re ruined?” I asked.

“I was always going to lose some. The amount of time it’d take to get a perfect harvest isn’t worth it. Stops being fun. Plus, we didn’t really lose out–we’ll get killer compost next season.”

I clipped the squishy squash from the blighted vines and stood up to face her.

“Everybody knows there are some things you can’t control, and shouldn’t waste energy trying to control. And there are things you can control and should try to control,” She continued. “Most folks get screwed up about the things you can control, but probably actually shouldn’t. Knowing where to spend your energy is just as important as spending it. Sure, I could get an extra squash or two out of the harvest if I really tried, but I might not have time to truly enjoy the soup. And isn’t that the whole point?”

I thought about her question as I looked down at the moldy squash in my hand. Then I lobbed it hard at the compost bin. I watched the rotten hunk sail through the air like a city pigeon, and then land with a satisfying *shlack* against the lid, sliding into the bin.

“Yeaaa!” We both yelled.

Our cheer caused a family of American Finches to abandon their seed eating and take flight. They chirped “po-ta-to-chip” as they disappeared high into the pines. I took a deep breath and inhaled the summer, scents of summer rose and Douglas fir swelling behind my eyes. A breeze played against the sweat of my brow and sent loose cherry blossoms swirling from their branches. I closed my eyes and let the sun bake my face into a soft smile–I was going to sleep well tonight.