space: the final frontier

I've said for a long time now that I could never be Buddhist, because I'm too damn neurotic. (You know that character on South Park, Tweak? The one that screams in fright and falls over all the time, apparently from high stress levels? I'm sort of like the nurse version of Tweak, with a little Cartman potty mouth thrown in there. Okay, so a lot of Cartman potty mouth.)

Because I'm neurotic as hell, I can't fall asleep easily at night. I can fall asleep during the day (but not if I work nights. My life is like Catch 22 meets Murphy's Law meets the Analytic Section of the GRE). And, I can probably only sleep during the day because I can't fall asleep at night and am therefore narcoleptically tired during the day.

I watch the clock all night, freaked out that I can't go to sleep. I've had this problem since I was a kid. I used to worry about going to sleep so I could be well-rested for school. My sister thought I was a freak. "Dude, just close your eyes and think about nothing!" was her sage advice.

Therein is my problem. Some people think of night time as this very peaceful, quiet time in which one thinks about nothing. I think of it as a vast pit of anxiety driven neurotic thought, in which I obsess over every little part of my day, and worse, the future. When work was really bad, I used to spend my days off worrying about going back to work, which made the night before the actual shift some what, ummm... hellish, actually.

So, yes, I do think of "nothing" at night, but in a much more existential way than I'm sure my sister meant (didn't Kierkegaard talk about "nothing" and "anxiety" being the same?) It's really sad, but I feel pressured to sleep at night, so I can't do it. It's like I have performance anxiety over sleep. Who has performance anxiety over sleep, I ask you?!

Well, yesterday, while I was at Target, I broke down and bought one of those lame New Age sleep cd's, with the delta waves and ocean sounds, and pan flute crap. I was hoping it would help put me to sleep. (I knew this wasn't really going to work but I was fronting like maybe I could be one of those normal people who don't stress out about things like guided relaxation or the thought of meditation. The couple of times people have tried to do the guided relaxation thing during school or whatever, I get totally bored and stressed out. I open my eyes, actually, and look around and see if everyone else is closing their eyes, and then started wondering if I was "relaxing" in the correct manner.)

So... the jury's in. The CD doesn't put me to sleep, goddamit! I want my fucking money back, bitches!

(The music also makes me feel like I'm in a planetarium field trip, circa fifth grade, except without the stars. Remember that music they played in the planetarium? I'm pretty sure they just transposed it to CD. And, it would probably be a lot more fun with the stars and planets and trippy music if you actually had some LSD to go along with it).

Sure, you're laughing now, but next time you take the kid to the planetarium, you're gonna think about this post.