Even in the most optimal of conditions, the transition between sleep and waking is a bitch. After an uninterrupted full night’s rest on a weekend with no obligations, for me it starts with disbelief. I am not ready to be waking up yet. I expected that I would sleep until Sunday, or at least until the sun started setting. Yet there I am, returning to consciousness, the sun bright and boring a hole directly into my brain. I try to keep my eyes closed and ignore the fact that I have returned to consciousness prematurely.
Then a countdown to the Point of No Return begins. 02:00:00 hours until I reach the Point of No Return. If I do not get the appropriate jolt of caffeine by then, my whole day is ruined.
I try to remember my last dream and force its continuation. I was in a palace eating an apple. What happened next? What happened next? The dream just turns into a conscious wandering of thoughts, a daydream of procrastination.
01:47:33. I ignore the fact that I really, really, really, really have to pee. It’s an emergency. I have to take my morning piss, or my bladder is going to burst. No. This is not time to wake up yet. I can do it when I wake up.
I go back to trying to dream, but since I have no choice but to control my own thoughts since I am actually awake, my thoughts can’t help but turn to work. How long do I have before I have to go back to work? How much time is there left in the weekend? What is the most urgent case in the pile of work on my desk, and how am I going to finish it? I remember awkward social situations, and imagine alternative scenarios where I could have done something differently. Then I realize, this is stupid. I’m awake. Acceptance.
00:49:06. A stupid internal struggle ensues, where I weigh the consequences of opening my eyes. I remember that I have to pee, and so dammit, I open them. I stare blankly at whatever is in front of me, still trying to hang onto that last dream. I remember some other dream I had in the middle of the night, and think back to it wistfully. I was on a boat traveling through a canal that ran parallel to the main street of an English town. There were candy shops everywhere, and people were speaking Arabic. I was hopping on and off of the boat, stopping at candy shops, playing with porcelain trinkets, talking to people and remembering being in this town before.
My bladder burns.
Dammit, I have to get up. I stretch my limbs and then leave them splayed out, wondering if this is really happening. Then I realize I can’t actually see anything, and it only feels like it’s not reality because I haven’t put my glasses on yet. So I feel around the nightstand until I find them, I wear them, and there it is. Reality and consciousness, in focus. I stretch again. I stand, and stagger to the bathroom for my morning piss, and then after I finish, I go back to bed.
One last try. Maybe I only had to wake up because I had to pee so bad.
00:17:29. At this point, I may go back to daydreaming and fail at falling asleep, or I might actually fall asleep again, and wake up sometime in the afternoon. Either way, when I get up, I will feel like shit. If I fail at falling asleep, it’s just a race to reach the coffee maker. Not making it means a headache until the next time I wake up, no matter how much caffeine I have. If I fall asleep again, I will wake up feeling like my head swallowed my pillow.
Then there are the less optimal circumstances, where I didn’t sleep my heart out until I couldn’t sleep anymore. They are the mornings where I have to set an alarm. Where the alarm has to be set a half hour before the time I actually want to wake up so that I don’t sabotage myself with pushing the Snooze button every nine minutes. Those mornings feel bad in a very different way. The cloudy, stuffy-head feeling is not there, but the headache, albeit different, is.
I have no recollection of sleeping, going to bed, or setting my alarm. No wait, I do remember doing that. But that was about 10 minutes ago. Did I set my alarm incorrectly? I look at my alarm. No. It’s correct, and I’m about to run late. But I still need to sleep. Getting up at this point can only be compared to the effort one exerts after having that magical jolt of adrenaline that only happens to humans when their loved one is trapped underneath a car that they are somehow able to lift off of them. The only things motivating me are the nap I tell myself I will have at the nearest possible time, either on transportation, at my desk at work, at home when I return from work–it doesn’t matter, I will have a nap–or the coffee that I need before reaching the Point of No Return. With my knees bent, I slowly stomp to the bathroom like Godzilla through Tokyo, dizzy with exhaustion and trying to hang onto my balance. I brush my teeth with my eyes closed, hoping that I am just dreaming about brushing my teeth. I don’t wake up.
A day that starts this way can very well unintentionally end early. Which brings me to waking up from accidental naps. I wake up with terror in my bed, diagonal, not remembering how I got there, unsure why I’m still wearing my clothes, and unable to recollect my own name. When I am able to calm myself into having somewhat coherent thoughts, I look at the clock. 7:30. Shit. I’m late for work. But wait. Why is it dark outside? The world ended? It’s 7:30pm. I fell asleep in the middle of the day. I am sticky, my head is throbbing, my neck hurts, and I know I am not going to sleep before 2:30 or 3:00am tonight. Which means I will wake up after three hours and start this vicious cycle again. It would have been better to just stay asleep until the next day, but of course waking up doesn’t work that way.
*Photo from phombo.
