What qualified as entering into insomnia? Was sleeping 3-4 hours less than usual a night for two nights straight a qualifier? If so, then color me insomniac, along with other self diagnosed ailments which I was sure were killing me. Would kill me. Would kill me in my sleep.
Technically? No, no I’ve never actually been dying, yet. I sometime thought to myself, “it feels like I’m dying, it feels like if I close my eyes I’m gonna drop dead,” but in reality I don’t even know what that felt like.
I’d slept in many hostels, thirty-two to be exact, or at least something around that number. Some had better mattress/pillow/linen situations than others; which is a brutally obvious statement. Turns out, some muffin shops have better muffins than other muffin shops. Anyway… of the thirty-two-some-odd hostels I’ve stayed in, this Boston-area based one might’ve had the worst mattress/linen/pillow situation I’ve ever had the pleasure to sleep on in a room with seven strangers. The mattress was kinda like if a company that made pool floats decided to dip their toes in the mattress game, but they just kept using the float material, and no traditional or modern mattress technology. Like a multilayered deflated pool float that was shaped kinda like a mattress. The pillow sucked. It was a bad pillow… I have no long winded pool based metaphor for that. The sheets were two sheets, neither of which were fitted, and only covered about two-thirds of the pool float, so that I had to layer them in an off centered manner… like how you layer newspaper pages to sop up a spill, or cover a larger area of floor before you cut your own hair at home… Like if a Newspaper got into the pool float/sheet game… but they switched to sheet material and kept their floor area covering standards. Yea.
So that was a bad start for a soon to be insomniac, on top of that I was stuck with with my brain. I had my brain and seven strangers’ nasal passages to contend with.
It was usually ailments -diseases, whatever you wanna call them- which I’ve deemed as sneaky (botulism, appendicitis, internal bleeding) that I was convinced were gonna get me, that we’re gonna drop me dead.
Lately, it became an issue after copious boozing. Every so often, I’d go out and try to do it the way I used to, the way I always have, but my body says, “no.” My body says, “stop.” Then the next day it says, “I’m doing this for your own good. For the love of God.”
And intellectually I knew, or at least I was pretty sure. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence that I had these sneaky dying sensations after putting my body through the gauntlet. The gauntlet of one more, and just one more, and okay one more but that’s it, and a night cap, then three more. Then waking up the next day and going to a birthday thing, or a BBQ thing, or a haven’t seen you guys in forever thing; a celebration. Where we’d start with the sun out and end with the sun coming back up, but I’d never recall the sun coming back up. I’d just remember waking up the next day and feeling the worst I’ve ever felt in my life, like I was dying.
And I can hardly move or eat. I can barely think, until the next day and the day after that and the day after that; where all I can do is think, think every negative thought that I can muster.
I must’ve ran into/fell onto something hard during my last “not remembering the sun coming back up” nights. Two nights prior to heading to Boston, to the Boston-area. I must’ve done something embarrassing, because the day before Boston- a day where I couldn’t move or eat or think- my ribs were sore, but I had no idea why. The last thing I remembered was saying, “yeeaaaa whhyyyy nottt,” to another whiskey. And earlier in the night someone saying the words “internal bleeding,” when voicing their concern about someone else’s fall. Then the next day my ribs hurt, but I could not recall why, and all I could think of was internal bleeding.
I felt somewhat confident I didn’t actually have internal bleeding, mostly because I didn’t have any of the symptoms, just a multi-day hangover and somewhat sore ribs. But the thought was stuck in the back of my craw
I didn’t eat two days before Boston, the gauntlet claimed any appetite I might’ve had. It still hadn’t returned the morning that I was heading out, but I forced myself to eat something; didn’t want to be malnourished on top of my internal bleeding.
My ability to think returned, and all I could think was, “fuck, I don’t wanna go to Boston at all.” I was in no mood to try and enjoy myself, I was only in the mood to to monitor my internal bleeding.
I arrived in Boston, and forced myself into action. My body said, “for the love of God.” As I ordered a few beers with a flurry of fried seafood and fried potatoes.
One by one the strangers filled the hostel’s dorm to call it a night. I had been in there for a while, on my pool float attempting to sleep. I would turn onto my rib cage and remember the internal bleeding, then roll off of it. I felt what I thought to be some slight discomfort in my lower right abdomen. Great. The beers and fried things gave me appendicitis. I rolled all over the pool float, and the newspaper sheets got all bunched up underneath me. The pillow sucked. It was a bad pillow. The room hummed with the sound of strange nasal passages. All rubbing it in, that they could sleep on pool floats and weren’t actively dying.
Tom Lettieri 