sleep attack

READER BEWARE: LOTS OF WORDS, NO PICTURES

First off-- I think the hermitage in the woods sounds like a great idea, Marshall. I wonder what kind of pilgrims we'll have coming to see us.

Secondly, I recently blogged about the fact that I can't get away from late nights here at school. One natural corollary that's followed from late nights, but still attending my early morning classes (8 o'clock is dang early, get offa me) is that I suffer from day-time narcolepsy.

It's awful. My early afternoons have been all but non-existent as of late. Trying to recollect what happens between like 12 and 4 is like trying to remember the events of a hazy, hallucination-filled fever/pipe dream. Take a typical Tuesday or Thursday--

I get up up at 7 AM and experience the intense agony of forcing my body to do something it desperately doesn't want to do. I pray standing up, leaning against the bunk-bed frame for support. (This has proved to be the only way that I can manage to say morning prayers without instantly falling asleep.) I get ready for school and ride my bike down to campus. I miraculously manage to stay awake through both of my back-to-back hour and fifteen minute history classes, which end at 10:45.

Then I head to the library. I start studying, and promptly fall asleep. As soon as I try to read a book/text that will tax my brain in any way, my mind shuts down and my body only too quickly complies. I end up waking up like half and hour later, dazed, confused, and groggy. The only thing I have the strength to do normally is shift positions somehow in the desk or chair before the next wave of sleep takes me out.

Fifteen minutes later I claw my way out of sleep and look at my surroundings. New people have arrived to fill the near-by chairs and tables that opened up while I was asleep, and look at me cautiously while I stir weakly, rubbing my eyes and breathing heavily. I clutch at my book and start looking at it, but even this paltry effort makes my eyes see double and I get pulled back into sleep.

Half an hour later I start from unconsciousness and realize it's futile, the library isn't working for me. My options are few at this point. Best bet will probably be the old Cougareat. I close my book, trying to bend back the pages that I bent while sleeping on them, and beat a groggy retreat from the library, having accomplished nothing.

By now maybe it's 1 o'clock, having wasted a solid two hours in the library trying to study without getting through more than a couple pages. I hit up the Cougareat, and head straight to Frescetta cuz there's never a line there and there's always some mozzarella sticks, hot or cold, waiting for me. I down the mozzarella sticks and a cup of marinara sauce, then hit the books again. Inevitably, though, in about twenty minutes my vision starts to blur again and holding my head up is difficult. Without making any conscious decision to do so, my head hits the table, and this time I'm out for an hour and a half.

When I wake up, I go through a few more waves of consciousness and unconsciousness, each wave of sleep spilling over me as I give in, helpless and panic-stricken. Then it's like 4:30 and I finally pull myself out of it to get a little bit of studying done. Then I go home.

On one of these occasions, my roommate was also in the Cougareat, looking for a free table. He couldn't find one, then he realized that the immobile lump sprawled on one of the tables was me. He sat down at my table and ate his whole lunch while I slept on, oblivious. When he finished, he left me there the way he found me. I had no idea this had happened. He had to tell me later that day.

And so that brings me to today. You wanna know why I'm even writing this? Because I had just pulled myself out of one wave of sleep-attacks, and in a desperate attempt to animate my mind and stave off unconsciousness, I turned to the blogosphere to save me. And here I am-- tired, bleary-eyed, but thankfully lucid.