in the mornings, a lingering

Copyright Jay Mantri 2019

I went to see a sleep doctor the other day, hoping to resolve a long-standing question in my mind: Do I really have narcolepsy? 

Like most people, I suspect, I’ve long had a troubled relationship with sleep. Soon after my divorce in 2006, I was in a state of self-improvement vigilance and resolved to finally settle this feud between endless energy and lifeless fatigue.  

So I saw a sleep doctor for the first time, did an overnight sleep study, and arrived a few days later with a diagnosis: narcolepsy.

Immediately I started second-guessing the diagnosis. I’ve never fallen asleep randomly while talking to someone or, say, while eating a meal had my head drop into a bowl of soup. Then again, there are varying stages of most conditions, narcolepsy notwithstanding. So maybe I had a milder form? 

To confirm the initial finding, I scheduled a daytime study, which I then proceeded to procrastinate on—until now.

Who knows why?

But in bed this morning I was thinking over all this again and trying to decide whether to proceed with a new sleep study or delay once more. And though the question of a delay is more financial than existential, it still led me down a path of examining my entire sleep history and the often metaphysical role this particular part of human existence plays in my life.

Does my misery feed a metaphysical need 
That's long since passed me by?
-Aaron Weiss, mewithoutYou

There were first, for instance, the late nights as a child when the child’s prayer above my bed helped first slip open the crack in my head that flooded my mind with thoughts of mortality. Paralyzed, I’d lay there paranoid and terrified to close my eyes. This night, after all, might be my last and, holy shit, it’s all out of my control. Or so the prayer implied. 

— 
Many years later, in the depths of one of my deepest depressive states, I yearned for that dissolution of control, praying to pass on peacefully in my sleep. Lacking whatever impulse pushes one past the fear of death and into the great unknown, I hoped for a passive passing, like the child’s prayer above my bed promised.

Eventually I staved off the loneliness brick by brick with a wall of books built where my wife once slept. Control had slowly returned, and I slept more soundly thereafter. 

— 
As the years crumbled by beneath me, I gradually adopted an entire sleep routine: No caffeine after 3, no screens after 9, books and sex only in bed, lights out at 10:30, eyes closed, body still, slow and deep breaths, one after another, until consciousness fades. 

This routine became a lifeline many years later when two new kids arrived and a seemingly eternal state of fatigue settled in as a new houseguest. Sleep, like most things in my life at that time, took on a dualistic sheen of heavy and light. 

I slept like a baby, which is to say undisturbed by the loudest provocations but startled straight from slumber to agitated anxiety at the slightest shift in energy.

Copyright Jay Mantri 2019

And then I also thought of those post-sleep mornings, that transition between nothing and something that feels like a new birth.

In the mornings, before the sun rises, I often awaken, or at least graduate from no longer asleep, and in this in-between state, I linger in a state of bliss. I watch the sky fade from black to blue, blue to red, red to gold, and I notice each gradual step of a new day dawning. 

And even though I still feel dead-tired, the longer I linger, the stronger my impatience grows to just get on with it, this day that awaits. Sleep might still beckon like a siren on the rocks, but I will my body upright anyway. 

And for a moment, a slight beautiful moment, this is all I want, indeed all I need. 

Soon I work on building into my day more moments like this—little pockets of adjustment, of settling into wakefulness more fully. I have my routine for this too: stretching, coffee, writing, breathing, music, praying, laughing, water, moving, reflecting, planning. 

Throughout the rest of the day, I stay present, or do my best anyway. I repeat my routine and this mantra: This moment is all there is. Stay awake, be here, you’re alive now.

And I realize now that only recently have I begun to consider myself a morning person. That my fascination with sleep has transformed into something else, and maybe that shift is something worth paying attention to as well. ​