To a college student, one of the most important things is sleep, no doubt about it. Right next to a healthy social life, and good grades, it is absolutely vital, no questions asked. But what happens if a college student goes for ten days without sleep, involuntarily? Well, that’s what happened to me, and it certainly wasn’t an experience I wish to undergo again.
To start off with, I had no idea what was the source of this, one night I just couldn’t fall asleep, and it just persisted for nine consecutive nights in a row. The most logical conclusion I could think of was finals, but I had finals more difficult in year’s prior, and nothing kept me from sleeping as bad as this incident. However, no matter what the problem was, the insomnia was endurance in itself.
On the first day, it felt as if it were nothing more than a few lost hours of sleep, nothing I hadn’t dealt with before from time to time. I was still able to perform, albeit not as great as I would have had I gotten a good night’s sleep, but I made my way through the day. When I got to bed that night, I expected to go back to sleep as usual, but boy was I wrong.
On the second and third nights, my activity, both mental and physical, was noticeably falling behind what it usually was, along with getting noticeably irritated. By this point, letters started jumping around, and everything seemed to be in one big jumbled mess that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. I didn’t know what was going on outside of my work, and I didn’t care much at all about it, all I wanted was to do my work, get some sleep, and be left alone.
For the next three nights, things were really taking a turn for the worst, as activity slowed down even more, but I began to be much more irritated and much more vocal about it. Things that should have been kept inside thought bubbles were now coming out in the open, and they were not pretty things. I began lashing out at my friends, people I hadn’t spoken to before, even teachers with a subtle passive-aggressive tone. The lack of sleep drove me to say these things in the open, and since I didn’t have the mental coordination to keep it in nor filter it out, everything could escape my mouth…and almost did.
Three nights later, it became difficult to even stand up, let alone function when all the classes demanded my most of me. The workload felt larger than usual and I just couldn’t keep up with it, often times I would break into fits of rage or crying to the surprise of others. Yet, I would still push through, for what end I did not know, since by that point I had nothing more to hope for since that night was a maxim of sleeplessness. Even with the help of some Melatonin pills from a friend, the chance of not sleeping became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
On day ten, I had hit my peak (or my zenith) and I just couldn’t do anything. I was running on backup energy and things were taking an indefinite turn for the worst. I almost got physical with some people because I was too irritated to care about them, and I didn’t give two damns about the rest of the world. The tenth night of no sleep had me lying awake wondering if this will end or if I will be as sleepless as the protagonist from Fight Club. It was agony, but thankfully it was over.
The next night, I had finally gotten to sleep. A full nine hours of it, victory was mine! But it wasn’t a pleasant sleep at all.
That night I had an awful nightmare involving a slaughterhouse-like hospital with blood and feces smeared on the walls, bodies dissected open (some still alive and awake) and a disturbing series of medical procedures. What a way to sleep after 10 days without it.
In the end, I did come over my insomnia, but I couldn’t have done it without my friends’ support, and sometimes the things that seem like the biggest hurdles, are nothing more than just pebbles on the path.
