Paradoxical Sleep

Earlier this year, horror afficienando and societal concern Ari Aster released a film called Beau is Afraid. The movie is a strange and offputting tale of a hyper-anxious man named Beau who experiences a Homeric hero’s journey, had Homer been under the influence of psychedelics and ridden with a unique disdain for humanity. The beginning of that film finds Beau faced with some sleeping troubles. Notes slip under his door begging him to turn down his music despite the restless silence inhabiting his room. These notes plague him until he truly does begin to hear music. Raging, throat tearing electronic dance music radiating from god knows where.

Here lies my ironic dilemma. 

My completely downtrodden luck when it comes to sleep and rest; My plight, whatever you’d like to call it, has left me no better option than to giggle at the utter chaos I’ve upended my life into. 

I used to live in an apartment that kept neighboring units awake, out of only slight fault of my own. The combination of one roomates’ two foot tall subwoofer and another roomates’ brutish, unhinged allure towards having thirsty company over every night of the week led to god-knows- how-many noise complaints and sleepless nights for the neighbors. 

Yet, somehow, I always slept just fine over there. 

Perhaps it was the relative simpleness of life compared to now, but I had no problem nestling in my covers as drum & bass remixes of Travis Scott songs pierced through my sanity. 

A year later I am in a new living environment and sleep – even rest – eludes me. I got a new job as a funeral director (we’re moving right past this) and I moved in with some guys who I barely knew beforehand. I threw my head towards the sky in a silent scream of bubbled over angst tinged with bleak irony upon my move-in-discovery that my room borders their “studio room”, a room equipped with a 2 foot tall subwoofer and a variety of instruments. 

I am a huge music fan – these developments excited me – however, unlike one year ago, life now contains a plethora of stressors that were unbeknownst to me in my previously carefree and unconforming household.

 I now work 12 hour days on a consistent basis, dealing with horrors beyond my comprehension. I feel an awful lot like Beau – how he becomes ‘Afraid’ and all. The days have grown so long that when I finally collapse onto my lovely bed by 11pm or midnight, my brain is filled with radio static and confusion. This experience is often accompanied by the swinging and slamming of my neighboring door before the innevitable roaring bassline of a Chief Keef song starts shaking the four walls of my room – I just can’t help but laugh. Maniacally. 

The hilarity ensues.

In the event that I do drift off into a fitful slumber equipped with the comforting knowledge that the next day I don’t have to get up quite so early, my sinuses start talking shit about halfway through the night. 

I go to sleep with the utopian idea that I’m going to *honk-shewww* cartoon sleep until the late hours of the morning. In reality, I jolt awake at 6:30am with either no airflow to be detected going in and out of my demented sinuses, or the wonderfully dry joke that is an early morning bloody nose. A twisted byproduct of the horribly dry air in this town that plays disgusting games on my nasal passage. 

So, when I’ve only been asleep for a few hours and am already forced to stagger to the bathroom to either mop up the double homicide slipping out of my nose or voluntarily waterboard myself with a saline solution netti pot, I just can’t help but laugh. 

It is complete and utter bliss when my eyes slip closed in the middle of the day and I can experience a release from this horrific joke that God has been playing on my sanity. 

It is somewhere in between my subconscious download of Chief Keef’s “Thotbreaker,” and my violent awakening to the daily ruination of my sinuses where I believe I experience the phenomenon of “Paradoxical Sleep.” A term that feels only right to capitalize. The body at rest while the mind whirs with activity and musings. I don’t have proof for sure, but the enlightening nature of my daily awakening leads me to believe that my sleep problems are only for the benefit of my own esoteric knowledge. 

Reader: Will! Why don’t you just take a load off, rest is important!

Well, as is Beau’s dilemma in Ari Aster’s film from this year, if it’s not one thing it’s another! I return from school to shocking developments at work. I resolve said developments as the day transitions to dusk and my body decides that it will remain in fight or flight mode until I go to the gym. This is to expel all of the events of my past that have decided to torment me that day with a good ol’ fashioned endorphin cleanse. The end-of-day-gym exhausts me, but don’t get too tired, Will, you have to listen to Chief Keef while you sleep tonight!

Am I going crazy? Am I stuck relenting to the exhaustive compulsions of a brain disorder? Is this column even funny anymore? I think it’s great. I’m a huge fan of my current lifestyle and the unconventional way in which it is trying to break me. Wouldn’t have it any other way.