‘It’s as if I’m falling from a 50-storey building’: a year without sleep

Novelist Samantha Harvey had always been a good sleeper until a house move and anxiety about post referendum politics left her anxious ... she recalls her panic at being awake for 60 hours at a time - and her hunt for a cure

Into bed and lie down. Head goes on pillow. Out of bed; superstitiously plucking the strewn clothes from the floor to fold them into rough bundles and put them away – one of countless little routines undertaken to forfend a sleepless night. One of countless little routines forcibly dismissed as superstition, in the superstition that superstitious acts will only shorten the odds of sleep – but unignorable in the end. Needs must. The attaining of sleep long ago left the realm of natural act and entered that of black magic. Back into bed and read, a collection of William Trevor short stories. There’s sleepiness soon, like something calling from around the corner. There’s a sharp, stinging pain at the crown of my head; the scalp is being stitched with embroidery needles. The lamp is shut off and the room is more or less dark. An odd creak issues from who knows where.

The heart starts up its thrup-thrup-thrup, a tripping percussion in a chest that now fills with breath. Breathe, breathe. I close my eyes and try to keep hold of that sleepiness, whose call is still there behind the heart’s syncopation. The heart a tough lump of meat, flooded with fear. Fifty minutes pass; it’s almost one. Usually if sleep is going to come it would have come by now; and if it hasn’t come by now, the probability is no sleep at all.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZwiKeN