insomnia

i don't know if my faithful reader has ever had insomnia. if so, you know that it is among the most frustrating and destabilizing conditions a human being can suffer. there is good reason it is used as a torture technique. it is torture, pure and simple. i think it is likely the quickest route from fully functional to deliriously delusional. i have taken that dreadful journey several times in my life and the details are the stuff of psych wards. there is a kind of desperation that comes with insomnia that can lead otherwise healthy adults to plead with the radiator to stop banging or slam a fist into a keyboard in response to a slow internet connection. insomnia changes a person and it is not an improvement.

last night i was trying to decide which of my dvd's to watch on my way to dreamland. i saw the "insomnia" cover and thought to myself, "i haven't seen that in a long time." in fact, i didn't even remember the plot. but i did have a vague recollection of having made a decision to not watch it. not knowing the basis for such a decision, i put it in anyway. i ran down the list of obvious suspects: does it have bugs? are there scary creepy people? are there ghosts? is there sudden loud screaming? i didn't recall that any of these things were the case, so it seemed safe. in retrospect, the issue should have been completely obvious to me.

i have friends who are former addicts who can't watch movies that depict addicts in their decline. the experience is too personal and too disturbing and the better the role is played, the more upsetting the movie. there is a whole list of drug/alcohol movies that one of my friends just refuses to watch. i should have remembered by its title, that this is how if feel about the movie "insomnia". the movie itself isn't fantastic cinema, but the editing and al pacino's depiction of the experience of insomnia is incredible. i would laud his performance if it wasn't so disturbing! it was incredible to me how the minute details of sleep deprivation are present in the smallest glances, gestures, comments. there is a scene on the telephone during which robin williams's character asks, "have you started seeing things yet?" he goes on to describe the kinds of things one might start "seeing" and i nearly started to cry. it was like i was there. i could feel the anxiety and frustration of being wide awake when i needed to be exactly the opposite of that. i recalled all the nights in grad school when i would long for an hour of rest. i felt the sting of familiarity as i remembered each sleepless night, my clarity slipping a bit during each subsequent day. i worried constantly that i was actually losing my mind. i knew that what was happening to me was what people mean when they say "seeing things", but that is not the kind of thing one goes about telling everyone.

as a result of watching mr pacino's impressive execution of the role of sleepless cop, i found myself still wide awake at the closing credits and battling the wide-eyed thought parade that used to be my life for the next 3 hours.

i think i'll make an effort to be more observant. if i come across a film called "stab a fork in your eye" i'll assume it's about that and probably choose not to watch it. this won't protect me from all things troubling, as some movies are more evasive in their nomenclature. "kids". "requiem for a dream". how was i to know the disturbing content of films with these titles? but something like "saw" is a sleep-with-the-lights-on kind of mistake just begging to happen.