Addiction to sleep

To those of you who have read my book, you know that due to medication and Generalized Anxiety Disorder I cannot function without at least eight hours of sleep and i would actually prefer ten to twelve. My husband sometimes laughs, sometimes hurts but in general understands. However, i was very happy to find a post by Leila Macor, a Venezuelan journalist and blogger (escribirparaque.blogspot.com). With her permission i translated her post into English to the best of my abilities and i bring it to you.

I should note that my husband was greatly alarmed when he read this post. He could not believe another person so alike to me existed much less that she was so happy and proud of her need for sleep. I had outrageous fun reading this to everybody who knows me and specially those who give me all kinds of remedies for my eternal need for shut eye time. To them i say: Me, let me sleep.

And now by Leila Macor,
Morpheus' lover (Morpheus is the god of sleep)

A long time ago, a friend showed me a video titled “the nap of a cat.” The edited video showed the small animal lying next to a window. While the sun shifted from morning to night, the cat only made small movements without waking up or upsetting himself.

I thought the video was funny, but I recognized that I am just like that feline. My mother always joked that I am alike our Lomuffin, my cat, because when he gets thrown out of the living room he just moves to later be found asleep in a bedroom. When Lomuffin is thrown out of the bedroom he moves to a chair to keep asleep. Well, I get thrown out around but I still sleep my naps.

I am addicted to sleep. When I go to sleep, I calculate the hours of sleep I will have, if they are a too few, I sleep hurrying while I anticipate the morning headache. Even worse, sometimes I am so worried about the lack of time for sleep that I cannot fall asleep. On the other hand, if I have ten or more hours for sleep, I fondle the blankets and wake up now and then just to prove I still have a lot of time to enjoy. I always wake up swearing and while I eat breakfast I calculate the hours I slept. According to the result, I decide what kind of disposition I am about to have for the day. If I stop by home from one activity to another, I lay ten to fifteen minutes which could add to three or four mini-naps per day. I usually sleep after dinner and wake up only to put on my pajamas and get under my soft covers.

Because of those miserable evening naps, I have done the worst of things. To delay a date with the excuse that I cannot find the car keys. To tell someone that I could not go to an event due to a unexpected storm. To rob half an hour from the job arguing an accident delayed me. To be late to a party and arrive without even lipstick on to show I did not have time to even do my make up. To spend a bunch of money on a taxi to get home as soon as possible and sleep before going out again. In the same fashion, I give preference to sleep to any other urgent matter I have to do… sometimes I had a report due or something to study but I preferred a thousand times to go to sleep at six and wake up early at three or four in the morning to do my homework. Of course, I still would wake up in a haze.

I have learned to sleep in all kinds of conditions. I sleep with the lights on, with noise, in stranger’s homes, on the floor, sited, and even once in a camp after a three day rain on my wet sleeping bag. I was drenched, the camping tent looked like a water bed and still, I slept.

I take the bus wherever I go and no matter where I go or what time, I do not notice if the bus took a different route, if new stores just opened, new buildings cropped up. “But you pass by every day!” people tell me. And it’s true but I pass by while asleep. If I am going to be honest, one of the reasons why I didn’t insist to my parents for a car, it’s not only that I am afraid to drive next to other cars, buses and taxis but because I cannot sleep while driving like I do in the bus… everyday. I am so pervasive with my bus naps that when a student from my high school with whom I was friendly started taking the same bus, I started to hurry at work to leave fifteen minutes early and not find him at the bus. I was friendly with him and content at first, but when around the third encounter he noted “I always find you asleep” and would start a conversation to keep me awake, I knew it was time to find a solution. If I saw him on the bus calling me from the window I would tell him I was going somewhere else and wait for the next bus. The story would have been very different if he had offered his shoulder for me to sleep on…

There is nothing that makes me as mad as someone interrupting my nap, it’s something I don’t forgive not even the love of my life… imagine now what other person would get from me!

I am contagious. Since me and my boyfriend started our relationship we set “five little minutes” to sleep together. We mean real sleep, in any bed, sofa or bus that we come across.
Now I clearly see why is not a good idea for me to have dogs, although I have two already, I had no time to walk them. I rather sleep with the cat. Fortunately, my dogs have no dignity and if I decide to take them out at 10PM, they are as happy as at any other time.
Because of scheduling, this week I started working evenings and I have no time to go back home for lunch so I have to sleep on my desk. But that was only before I called my best friend Daniela whose house is about 15 minutes from my job. I was seriously considering bringing my sleeping bag to the office in order to sleep after lunch and in between jobs. But I hope to have the keys to Daniella’s house soon and believe me, I don’t care if she has a microwave oven to heat my “lunch,” wireless Internet to spend the time, TV or even a bed… she still has a nice cool floor where I can lay my sleeping bag and sleep at least for half an hour to avoid feeling like the day was “not enough to do anything.”

I am sick envious of the people who can sleep four or five hours and wake up refreshed, go for a run at the park and still have a couple hours before they go to work. I also cannot believe those people who say “I cannot go to sleep until 10… I just can’t, I wake up and I cannot stay in bed.” But the worst are those who question my naps alleging that I will have time to sleep when I am dead. To them, sleeping is a small death that stops them from reaching goals, reading, working, studying or exercising, and hence they see sleep as a daily shore they must do and finish as soon as possible.

To those who deny sleep to themselves, my addiction to sleep looks like an adolescent rant, a depressive symptom or a total incapacity to reach success in life. Let’s be honest, no entrepreneur, genius or conqueror went into history for being a good sleeper. On the other hand, in history I would be a useless human who sleeps while those, the triumphant ones, would live twice as much as me. My bed and me however, know that this is not important because the planet is already full of successful sleepless dudes. So explain to me Why does the world need me? Me, let me sleep.