Drafted Insomniac

I’m listening to the audio book of Pascal Mercier’s “Nachtzug nach Lissabon”. The main protagonist in the story suffers from insomnia. He has a friend, also an insomniac, who he calls in the middle of the night, if he can’t sleep. The two converse on the phone… sharing company through their long stretches of sleeplessness. Later in the book, there is mention of the protagonist also going on long walks through the city in those early morning hours when the city is not yet awake.

These are things I would never have thought of doing during the seven or eight years I had insomnia. Maybe this was because I am not by nature an insomniac. I was what I called a drafted insomniac. Drafted into being an insomniac by a higher cause. Nature Girl.

You see Nature Girl did not sleep through the nights the first four years of her life. She did not sleep during the day either after the first six months. When I say she didn’t sleep through the night, I don’t mean she woke up, drank a bottle and went back to sleep. No, that would have been fine. Instead, she got up and stayed up for the next two to four hours.

So, there I was, previously one of those sleep-while-standing-up-in-a-bus sorts of person, living in the world of no-sleep. Even after Nature Girl finally managed to sleep through the nights, I didn’t. I’d go to sleep around eleven at night and then wake up four hours later; just at the time Nature Girl used to wake up. Except, after the first four years she didn’t, there was only me awake until dawn. The doctors explained to me that three years of sustained sleep deprivation reprogrammed the neurons in my brain. This didn’t help me in any significant way, but it was, at least, an explanation.

The idea of calling a friend or going out for a walk in the middle of the night never ever came to my mind. Basically, I thought I was loosing my mind during those early hour vigils. The essential lesson I learnt is that sleep is the next on the list, right after being able to breathe, when it comes to what you need to stay alive.

It’s not late, but still, time to go to sleep. What a luxury.