Wanted: Sleeping Pills
Insomnia is not cool. It’s only cool for people who don’t really have it. It’s only fascinating when it’s Edward Norton suffering from it in stylish agony in Fight Club. (Warning: spoiler ahead.) In that movie, Norton’s insomnia caused him to develop a split personality: Brad Pitt. What I’d give to project a split personality who looks like Angelina Jolie.
Anyway, for the past two weeks, my insomnia has come back with a vengeance. I’ve been up until six in the morning and then I make my way to work at around half past nine. Sometime between six and nine, I doze off and dream that I’m at work working on an article draft. In my dream, the words are floating about and I just pluck them from the air and put them together on paper. Alas, I am then jolted awake by the chirping of a bird outside my window. (Hey, I’d like being awakened by a different kind of bird one of these days.) I don’t know if it’s the same bird or if it’s a whole family of birds who get together and say, “It’s your turn to chirp outside her window today.”
By the time I get to my cubicle at the office, my brain’s already so fuzzy from fatigue. But I can’t sleep even if I wanted to, so I work and hope I can write fast enough to beat the deadline for the day. Then, a weird thing happens. After about an hour of writing, my fatigue disappears and I feel like I can go on sitting in front of the computer until the seventh installment of the EDSA Revolution transpires right outside our office building. I told an acquaintance about this and his response was this: “Nag-babato ka ba?” To which I asked, “What do you mean?”
It turned out that he thought I was using bato or shabu. Yikes. This is because, he said, prior to meeting me, he thought insomnia was when you slept at midnight or something like that. “Well,” I said, “I’m the real deal.” Of course, he still couldn’t believe it. “May problema ka ba?” he asked. “Wala,” I answered.
There’s really no problem keeping me up. My only problem is that I stay up. Unfortunately, not everyone gets that. Or maybe I’m ingesting shabu in an alternate form. Could it be in the quail eggs that I’ve been eating (more or less regularly) for the past two weeks? I hope it isn’t. I plan to have those eggs for lunch today.