Where is it? That wonderful, healing, evasive, pervading, and even sometimes playful state of consciousness—called sleep. Sometimes it is teasing and pretends to be just on the horizon before flippantly removing itself behind thoughts and daydreams and refusing to be found.
The root of the type of sleeplessness that consumes me now is that energy-sapping overthinking that comes with preparing for travel. From the macro of planning (hotels booked, flight schedule confirmed, transfers arranged, bags not packed but the contents arranged and rearranged and rearranged again in my head)—to the micro (plants steeped in water, fridge emptied of potentially rot-able material, neighbours notified of my forthcoming absence, floors vacuumed and bed sheets ready for changing). Should some catastrophic event befall me and prevent my return, heaven forbid that my home doesn’t look presentable when strangers come in to clear the detritus of my life—I will want them to know that I was a clean and orderly person once upon a time. Yes, overthinking indeed.
And still no sleep. Sleep seems to have its own agenda—yes, I will; no I won’t; not now; not for the foreseeable future and certainly not just when you want it—but it also uses its ruses to prepare us for times in our lives when we simply cannot just close our eyes in happy oblivion and give ourselves over to peaceful dreaming. Many of us preparing for the birth of an offspring have spent sleepless nights beforehand in anticipation of spending our night hours listening, stirring, waiting to feed or to respond to an infant’s demanding cry. And all too often in life we lie awake planning for the next day’s activities—rewriting that important speech in our heads or mentally laying out the structure of a day (which never seems to totally correspond to the day that eventuates). And so often we spend useless hours trying to take ourselves to that other place where counting sheep successfully eases us into that elusive land of slumber.
I have travelled so often now on long-haul flights and extensive train journeys—and spent so many long hours in transit—that I have come to think that the sleeplessness which sees me writing now in the early hours of the morning (sleeplessness that chuckles at the stupidity of my misuse of a dark, quiet night), has a purpose—oneI recognise now and embrace. It is preparing me for the up-coming hours of sitting in the tortuous confines of an aircraft, overfed and under-imbibed, with excess fluid accumulating around my ankles and where sleep is but a notion, not a reality.
The good thing is though, that the sleeplessness of travel can be surprisingly therapeutic—no more thoughts of preparations or potential disasters, and much like a new parent with her baby in the cot, I can give myself over to the moment (the hours) with the thought that there is nothing else I can do here—it is what it is. And if I haven’t packed to the best of instructions on the many travel sites that litter my laptop, it really won’t matter—I will be able to improvise for sure.
But all that is still a few days away and I need to deal with my present wakefulness in the only way I know how—clear my head by writing about it.
Mission accomplished. Hello, sleep; where have you been?