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"Please let me sleep...." I whisper with a hush toward the rotating ceiling fan that hangs above my bed.

"Go ahead dude, I ain't botherin' you none.  I am just doin' my job here."  The fan responds with a voice that sounds too much like H.A.L in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" for my liking.

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I start to bargain with the fan now. "I just need to drift all now...if I fall asleep now than I might be alright in the morning." 

"I doubt it. I listen to those crappy morning talk shows you leave on in the morning.  They said a while ago that a person needs at least 6-8 hours a night to feel refreshed in the morning.  You have two and a half hours til' sun up.  Face it you're screwed.  You should just stay up all night."  The fan coldly commands me.

"That was the same advice you gave last night!  I did it and all day long I have felt and looked like a  dead guy who just dug his way out of his own grave just to have a quick Bit 'O brains." I contend.

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"I stand by that advice, it's solid.  Why fight it anymore.  You have been laying there for hours trying to sleep.  It ain't coming buddy.  Just stay up and maybe watch something emotionally satisfying on The Lifetime Network." 

I have had it with this damn fan.  "You're crazy!"

"I'm crazy?  You're the one talking to a fan every night.  That is not a good sign isn't it buddy?"

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The fan was right. 
It was always right. 

Giving up I slide out of bed as to not wake up my wife who is blissfully sleeping.  I stumble toward my bedroom door knowing that this was going to be another night of sleeplessness.  There is no worse feeling than this. It is the feeling of pure defeat.  I want nothing more than to melt into my covers and enter the world of REM sleep and snoring.  I have begun to miss everything about sleep....heck I even miss having eye-boogers. 

Leaving my bedroom  I give one last look back at the fan and I ask out loud "Why can't I sleep anymore?"

I want it to say something.  Anything.

It doesn't answer because it can't.   It just keeps spinning. 

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I am so very damned tired...but the bright side is at least I can watch the sunrise. Again.



As you can see I have a new hobby that is causing me to accelerate my journey to my first (of what I am sure will be eight) complete nervous breakdown.  I have taken to watching my ceiling fan spin and lumbering around above me for five hours every night. I should not even call it a hobby because it sounds like it is something that I actually enjoy.  The truth is I hate it with every inch of my fuzzy hobbit-ish body.  I hate it the way Canada must hate itself.  I hate it the way my father hated any report card I brought home that contained more minuses on it than any North Dakota weather forecast.  I hate my new hobby in a way that Brian Dunkleman hates Ryan Seacrest.  My hatred for my newest activity could only be compared to how Charlie Sheen must feel towards his liver. 

It is more like a vice...I can't stop doing it.  I can't stop because I need something to do while I am laying there suffering with insomnia.  The key word in that sentence is "suffering" because that is exactly how it feels.  Before I was afflicted with this curse of not sleeping I used to think that the people who had insomnia just needed to "quit thinking so much and get to sleep".  I thought that maybe they just needed a glass of warm milk and start counting sheep or some other bedtime slumber inducing ritual that would gently rock them into unconsciousness.  Now that I am deep in the woods of insomnia myself I can say with certainty that I was a naive meat-bag to ever think that someone could just "will themselves to sleep".

I have tried everything sans narcotics to try and knock myself out at bedtime.  I have counted so many sheep that I believe any ink blot test I would have to take would be laced with those wooly little bastards.  I have listened to calming meditative music on my Ipod that while making me feel like making out with a furry little bunny I am still laying in my bed with wide eyes.  I have drank more warm milk than any man who has a 37-year old digestive system ever should.  The list of things I have tried is growing every night...including apparently talking to my fan) but still sleep does not come.

This started on New Years Day and it has not really stopped since.  I have had little breaks from it here and there but I am usually thrashing around in my bed at least 3 or 4 nights a week.  It is inexplicable and it came out of no where.

I can get to that little place between being awake and sleep.  You know it's that place where our brain starts to merge with dreamland.  Where are conscience thoughts start to fade away and our unconscious ones  move in to take it's turn on our stage.  I can get to that place where I start to drift away when suddenly something taps me and I am wide awake again.  It happens again and again and again all night long.  I almost slip into a deep and peaceful sleep but something is there flicking me on my heart and then I am right back to starting at the fan.  It is like trying to start a car but the engine won't turn over. 

The thing is I would understand this problem if I had something on my brain that was causing me to be worried, stressed, or anxious about.  There is nothing that there in my thought problems that is causing me to not join the world of dreamers.  In fact I can say without any hesitation that I am more at peace now than I have ever been in my life.  So my brain is not going crazy with thoughts or things that I am concerned about.  There is nothing banging around in my head....except for the fact that I can't sleep.  Usually around 3 am that becomes the central thought and when that happens it is game over.  I start to panic and then I start to rationalize.  Here is a litany of the things I start to think:

"Ok...if I get to sleep now I can get four hours of sleep.  That's enough"

"I really really need to get to sleep now.  Right now.  Go to sleep...right...now.  Now."

"I am still not sleeping. Crap."

"Ok...if I get to sleep now I can get three hours of sleep.  I will take a nap sometime during the day and I will get caught up."

"Maybe if I think of all the types of cereal I can name that will be boring enough to knock me out.  Cookie Crisp. Golden Grahams. Raisin Bran. (yuck) Kix. Oh's. Coco Crisps. Grapenuts. (what the hell is a grapenut anyway?) Rice Krispies.  Life. (double yuck) Lucky Charms...

"Seriously man...get to sleep....oh God is that light of the sun?  No...not yet...it can't be that early yet.  I still have time."

"Ok...so I can totally get by with two hours of sleep...right?  Right?"



What Dreams May Come?  I would even take this one...

The thing I miss most about sleeping is dreaming.  I love it because it is so mysterious!  Are dreams a collection of our emotional baggage that we carry around?  Are they real places that our souls travel to while our physical bodies rest?  Or are they messages from the divine that are meant to be interpreted?  I have no idea...I would probably rule out that they are messages from God.  I don't think God would take to sending me instructions through talking turtles who are dressed in nice looking vests and bow-ties.  Dreams are amazing little movies that our brains put on for us and I am fascinated by them.  I don't get to watch any of those dream-movies anymore.  I just get that stupid fan...

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I have been reluctant to write about my insomnia because I am afraid that admitting it as a real problem would give too much power to it.  The act of putting in down on paper or on the screen gives this monster an extra row of sharpened teeth.  The only reason I am doing it is because it plays off of my last blog entry about my unfortunate "birds and bee's" talk I had with my son, Noah. But now I was confronted with another hard conversation that started out innocently enough.

Here is the issue:  While I am begging for sleep my autistic son is terrified of it.

Like I mention in that entry I am often at a loss of words when it comes to questions any of my children have for me.  Most of the time it is because I have no idea the answer...like when they ask me about anything involving fractions I just look at them like they spontaneously grown a third armpit on their forehead.  I am not a wealth of knowledge when it comes to many of the questions they have because I have the intelligence of a bottle of Sprite.  The last thing I want to do is to give them the wrong answer or terrible piece of advice that sometimes I find myself biting my tongue and remaining silent.

Once again I found myself at a loss for words by something that my sweet Noah said.  Tonight he told me that "did not want to go to sleep."  Which is something that he and his brothers have told me at bedtime just about every night.  They want an extra ten minutes of playing, reading, or sometimes drawing,  So a statement about not wanting to go to bed was not unheard of.  However, with myself in such a desperate need for sleep I found myself less than forgiving when it came to this attitude. It seemed that every night he and I were having a discussion of "why he should go to sleep". 

"It's time for sleep now so lets go." I said with as much parental authority as I could muster.

"I don't want to." Noah said.

I shot back with my programmed response of "That's too bad.  Bedtime is here whether you want it or not."  I said it with the perfect blend of both snarkiness and disinterest that I was sure he would have no room for argument.

He found some room... "No.  I hate sleep."

"Well it's good for you."

"No it's not. I am scared of it."

Those words took me out of my scripted parental response.  Scared of sleep?  What the huh?  I pressed him on what he meant and he reminded me of something that I have known for quite some time but I had not considered when it came to this. Noah is not good with the abstract.  Not at all. 

At the age of ten he is already carrying around with his heart the fear of dying because he does not want to "disappear".   We try to talk to him about heaven and God but those are concepts that have a very hard time computing in his brain.  The idea of anything that is unseen is something that takes him a while to wrap his amazing and unique brain around.  Lately he has begun to equate sleeping with dying.  He rationalized that when he falls asleep he is "disappearing" and not going to a place that is not real.  And he is truly and deeply scared of what happens if he does not wake up...would he be stuck in his dream.

Where he is fighting to stay awake I am fighting to get to sleep.  Even at that moment the irony was not lost on me.  I could see the true fright and fear in his eyes.  So I began to talk and comfort and convince him that sleep was nothing to be scared of and that he would certainly wake up.

"How do you know I will wake up?" Noah asked me like he was Barbara Walters and I was some poor Enron CEO who was on the defensive.

"I just do. I am a dad.  I know stuff." I said trying to at least convince myself that I did in fact "know stuff".

"But how do you know I won't disappear in my sleep?"  He asked needing an answer.

He needed me to say something.  Anything.  But I knew I was not going to be able to give him an answer that was going to settle the raging sea inside of his heart.  So for a few painfully quiet moments that had drawn the attention of my eight year old son Riley who was peering over the top bunk down below to eavesdrop on this convo.

What could I say to my son who is so scared of the unknown and the abstract?  There was nothing I could say.  I could not find the perfect words.

But I knew I had to say something.  Anything.  My brain started to spin like that freaking fan.

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I broke down and just started talking....

I droned on and on about the power of sleep, God, his soul, etc.  It was a very metaphysical conversation and I just went on and on.  With every worry he had I had to try to come up with a positive response.  My brain kept wanting to freeze and stop talking it.

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I resisted the urge to shut up. I became a blowhard and answered each of his questions with so much certainty that he probably thinks I was under oath.  With every answer I could feel a tinge of guilt in my gut.  Some of the things I was telling him I don't really know for sure. For example I  made a promise that I was going to be around until he was at least 50 years old... I was just telling him things that he wanted and needed to hear.  I promised him things that I am sure would make the divine engineer a little ticked off at my presumptuous.  While I am not sure that he believed everything I was saying he did find comfort in the fact that I just kept talking.  By the time I was done I think he was in agreement that he would wake up tomorrow morning and he would not in fact disappear.

I spun on and on until he laid his head down on the pillow.  While talking I learned a valuable lesson in being a dad.  Sometimes it is more important to just say anything than to be too afraid of being perfect and saying the wrong thing.  I could not in that conversation (as much as I tried to) convince him that his soul would never die and he would never disappear.  Those are things and concepts that will take a while to make any sense to him.  What I found was that  Noah just needed to hear my voice and my reassurances.  In the end he was okay with drifting into the unknown as long as I would be there in the morning to help wake him up.

I have to stop being afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Sometimes I need to just say something ...even when I feel like spinning like a fan instead.





With this blog entry I am asking you to pray for a dad who cannot sleep and a little ten year old boy who is haunted by it.