Before I dive into this, realize this is a very personal article. My name is Steven Snow and I am a paranoid insomniac. I have been paranoid since 11 years of age, and had insomniatic tendencies even before that. While this is something that I have lived with for over 11 years, it's still a struggle every day to battle the difficulties of life on no energy due to lack of sleep. This was prompted by a good friend, who recently showed me a previous article from another friend about what it's like dealing with certain types of people in life. The article focused on one specific type of person who reacted differently than most when in a relationship.
I decided to write this to kind of explain what it's like to be me on a daily basis. While I want to dive in and tell you all the symptoms and effects I feel daily, it's important to mention that I'm not a usual case when it comes to paranoia or insomnia. Perhaps it's from years of experience or perhaps it's just that I'm strange even without the issues. Either way, I don’t experience everything paranoid insomniacs face, but I do experience a lot of it.
Think of the time in the morning where you wake up feeling groggy and not ready to get out of your bed. Many people consider this one of the most difficult things to do with their day, getting up in the morning. For me, it's going to sleep at night. Insomnia falls into two major categories: Chronic and acute. Chronic insomnia is the difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or feeling fatigued in the morning that spans more than a month, occurring at least three times a week. Acute insomnia has the same effects, but over a short period of time, usually coming in a burst every now and again. I experience the former.
Think about when you get up in the morning. You're half asleep and you're on your way to a various activity when someone stops you and asks, “Hey, how are you?” You instinctively answer “Good,” or “OK.” This is not the case when you have chronic insomnia. The answer is always “tired.” No matter the day, the first reaction I have is to say that I'm tired. I read a great meme the other day that said “Being tired is no longer a temporary condition for me… it has become part of who I am.” This really emphasizes a large problem when doing things like working, driving, schooling… living. This puts a person like myself in a constant state of using every ounce of reserved energy I have to get through that long commute to work or that big paper I have. As I'm sure you can imagine, this makes it very difficult when people question my work ethic. Many people don’t understand that I used everything I had just to show up. I'm not lazy. I'm lacking the physical amount of energy to go 100 percent.
Insomnia is one monster that drains you and can cause you to go days with little to no sleep at all. Doctors will tell you that by the third day, you enter "microsleeps," where your body will shut down randomly without warning just to allow some form of rest to occur. And this shouldn't be confused with sleeping, as the mind is still awake and active, but your body will not respond to commands. This is a terrifying experience. At one point, I was on my third day without sleep, and after using the bathroom at the local Target, I proceeded to wash my hands, only to not be capable of actually moving as I watched the water rush over my hands. This lasted for a good minute and a half, while in my mind, I feared that I wouldn’t be capable of moving ever again.
Another large problem that occurs around the third day is hallucinations. This is where I have to turn and give my roommate props for dealing with me on the occasional nights where I can sleep, but wake up in the middle of the night, hallucinating and wondering if he's playing a trick on me. This can be also extremely terrifying, as it can be anything from hands up the side of the bed to a python at the foot of it. Once, I woke up screaming at the sight of a zombie child girl in the corner of my room. My roommate is a patient person. Respect for Adam.
Insomnia allows these symptoms and many others to occur, only to be emphasized by the paranoia. If you think that insomnia is bad, recognize that going through your day and feeling like anybody or anything could turn on you and attack makes any and all hallucinations feel as if life could end at any moment. For those of you who know me, I seem very personable and upbeat. But this is only half the truth. At any moment in time, I'm prepared and waiting for anyone to turn on me. This may sound kind of harsh, and I don’t mean to make any of you feel as though I think poorly of you. I'm like this with everyone, aside from a very select few. Everyone feels like an enemy and it feels like everyone could turn on me. Combine this with the lesser processing from no sleep, and the result is my reaction to people differs from day to day. It can cause a lot of problems when interacting with people that I don’t know very well.
People who are paranoid insomniacs are doing everything they can to function at the best level possible. It's hard enough keeping the smile on all the time when you aren’t sure if that friend you’ve known for a couple years is gonna turn on you. Paranoid people can read malice in anything, and while I didn’t explain a lot about that, it should be mentioned that if you say something remotely discouraging, it could be taken as an attack, and it has been. You've just lost a massive amount of trust in that one moment. Insomniacs can’t control their sleep all the time, so telling someone with insomnia they “need to get more sleep” just tells them you clearly don’t understand the situation. Finally, the next time you see that coworker, employee, student or peer who has insomnia and isn’t doing what they're supposed to, remember they probably used all of their energy attempting to get to the place they're now at, so don’t blame them for things they can’t control.
You wouldn’t expect your boss to be mad at you for being slower at work if you got struck by lightning, would you?
