insomnia

listening to: Moulin Rouge!!!

I've never fallen asleep well. Long past the witching hour, I am restlessly awake still, either working on something with unshakeable concentration or lying awake in bed with millions of thoughts rushing uncontrollably through my mind. I probably don't have to tell you about how completely different the world is at this hour. Most people have been up this late enough times to have experienced what it's like; you know what I mean when I say that in the middle of the night your mind works in a fundamentally different way than it does when the sun is up. I leave the description up to your imagination, largely because I just don't have the attention span right now to write coherent soliloquies about the ways in which your mind becomes focused and free, relaxed, creative, and reaches conclusions from a whole different perspective.


Sometimes I'm up late because I'm doing something that I don't want to stop. But I've also racked up so, so, so many hours of my life lying awake in bed wishing I could fall asleep. On these long nights I lie there, desperately tired, my body begging for rest, and my mind rebelling despite all the good sense in the world. It's uncomfortable. It can be boring. And it hurts the next morning.

But these past few days have been even weirder. Not only am I unable to fall asleep, but I'm not even remotely tired. Not physically tired, certainly not mentally tired. No, I'm actually energized like never before this whole summer. I'm completely hyperactive. In fact, I would ideally prefer, instead of sitting here quietly in my bedroom in my pajamas, to be dancing. I imagine myself at the Moulin Rouge, wrapped up in that magical world of ideal love, passionately ripping out my heart in a heated Spanish tango. I want to move with every fiber of my body, flying in spirals, releasing emotion carelessly as if it was escaping from my soul as bolts of electricity build up to too high a voltage, crying! screaming! ranting! singing!!! all in celebration of the intensity of the drama! Only when I'm totally spent and unable to breath anymore do I finally collapse.


It's 5am.

These magical hours won't linger much longer. In just two hours I have to be waking up to get ready for work, but this just doesn't matter to the forces keeping me awake right now. I'll wake up, and I'll be tired, but I can't escape tonight's buildup of life's intensities, nor would I really want to. After a summer of relative lethargy, my departure for Paris quickly approaches and my fingers begin to twitch at the computer keys and the phone dial, fighting to bring all the necessary details together. My excitement is charging, filling me with life. Earlier, at 3am, I could be found sitting on the edge of my chair, back rigid, bouncing slightly. I'm calling my apartment agency over and over again thinking that maybe this time I'll get something other than their answering machine (it's 10am over there! they should be in the office!!). I already left them a whole message in French last Friday, and I can't very well improvise a new one. I go devour a piece of bread. Dad is up too, and he tries to explain 9/11 conspiracy theories to me. What? My mind can't focus. It feels like he's talking at a snail's pace. Can't he see that I don't want to stand there listening right now?

This is not the first time I've been up this late within the past few days. The other day I couldn't fall asleep until 7am. It's coming. France is really, really coming, and I can feel the shock waves from here.