Thoughts on Sleep
When I was little, I had a friend who couldn’t fall asleep without the TV on. Sleepovers at her house meant hearing snippets of the more adult material that Nickelodeon aired after hours when I stirred in the middle of the night. By contrast, sleepovers at my house meant my mother bringing a toaster-sized TV into my bedroom and popping in a VHS. I remember my mother saying of my friend then, “poor girl. That’s a terrible habit.” And so it was instilled in me: needing background noise to fall asleep was a weakness. I’ve never had a television in my room, nor a sound soother. In college, I remember pitying roommates who preferred to sleep with a fan on even in winter for the white noise whooshing. I didn’t need any of it. But in this age of cell phone addiction, sometimes putting my phone down for the night and succumbing to the quiet darkness of my room seems terrifying-the sudden absence of stimuli like the severing of an umbilical cord. Could it be that I am finally one of those people who needs sound to sleep?
I think of the warm, safe feeling I had whenever falling asleep in my childhood bedroom. There were sounds, to be sure. The rhythmic thumping of the washing machine just across the hall, the clinking sounds of my mother washing the last of dinner’s dishes downstairs. But more than sound, there was a feeling. A feeling that life and activity were continuing on around me as I drifted off. What a reassuring thought. In a sense, going to sleep is a tiny death, leaving behind the day, leaving behind consciousness. Settling down to sleep without companion or distraction is to willingly slip into an abyss, to look into the face of oblivion and remember that one day we are bound for it, alone. We will have to leave behind the only party we’ve ever known.
But for now I am in Brooklyn. It seems that my apartment is completely silent. I ache for the comforting backdrop of childhood, knowing that mom and dad will be awake until long after you’ve drifted off. But then I remember that there’s a city of 8 million people outside my window. Trains, buses, and taxis still in motion. Just down the street from me are several businesses open 24 hours. As I doze, there are employees cleaning, yawning, texting, laughing, going outside for smoke breaks. There are people drinking, writing, getting on planes, singing, breaking up, kissing goodnight. The existential dread wanes. I am not dying yet. Only sleeping. So that tomorrow I might once more count myself amongst the living.
