Wednesday, 10 May 2017

The Realm of the Morning People

As previously discussed, I am not a daytime person
Sometimes, however, mornings are forced upon us. Not, in this instance, because of a work commitment or early train or holiday, but because of that old caveat: insomnia.

I'm not a full-time insomniac - just enough shifts to make life that extra bit difficult. 9am lectures sure are an adventure when you've had about five hours' sleep across the past three days. Normally, however, my insomnia involves laying awake for seven hours before finally drifting off at 6am, an hour before my alarm - in this instance, it was the other way around. After a day in which I literally did nothing but carry out errands in town and then try to write an entire report on bird behaviour, I got home at shortly before midnight vaguely bewildered as to how I had literally done nothing especially enjoyable (although I like to think that I take enough delight in simple things to make everyday activities worth the energy) and now had to go to bed. I did go to bed. I fell straight to sleep, at about half past midnight.
I promptly woke up not long after 2am, sweating and terrified, following a dream of which analysis does frankly not bode well at all for my mental condition.
I got water, I calmed down, I went back to bed.
I laid. I turned. I meditated. At about 5.30am, I gave up and made a fried egg sandwich.

When I mention insomnia, people suggest:
  • Meditation;
  • This music;
  • This tea;
  • A boring book;
  • Turning off electronics an hour before bed;
  • That tea;
  • Not eating three hours before bed;
  • That medication;
  • Podcasts;
  • Another tea...
Listen. Listen. I know that blue light activates your brain. I have a blue-filter on my laptop to reduce blue light after 9pm. I have a bedtime ritual which involves well over an hour of cooling down, unwinding, relaxing, letting go of the day's activities, switching off, reading the most boring books I can find...
And anything herbal or medical stronger than chamomile and lavender tea interferes with my other medications and could kill me in what would admittedly be a very restful sleep.

People also ask why I got up at 2am/didn't sleep last night/only got x hours sleep.
"I get insomnia sometimes."
"Why?"
"...? Because my brain thinks I should be awake? Idk, it's not a choice."
"Have you tried--"
"YES. I HAVE TRIED THE TEA. I HAVE TRIED THE MEDITATION. NO I DO NOT USE ELECTRONICS AT NIGHT. YES I TRIED JUST PRETENDING TO SLEEP AND HOPING IT HAPPENED."
"... wow, sorry, just trying to help..."

Frankly, complaining about insomnia could fill a dozen posts, incoherent to the well-rested and all too relatable to those familiar with its stuffy tortures. But, in accordance with the aforementioned habit of seeing small good things in everything, this is actually a post about what happened afterwards.
Realising that my insomnia was reversed to the normal pattern gave me an idea, you see. If you can't sleep until 6am, you become basically nocturnal; to get a healthy amount of sleep you would have to not get up until at least 2pm, and despite that being the same number of hours of sleep as a Morning Person, it's seen as entirely lazy and unacceptable. It gets frustrating because people assume that a student who sleeps until noon was up all night drinking/on the internet/playing video games, or has been sleeping for twelve hours like a horrible teenager. Actually I've done every item on the "better sleep" checklist and still haven't achieved more than two hours' sleep for the past three days consecutively, but ta for the sympathy...
Yes, sorry, not complaining.

So I decided, as I got up at 5.30am - the birds had been singing for an hour and a half; it was already bright as day outside - to make a fried egg sandwich, that I was going to try and take advantage of this unique situation. If the 6am workers are the better people, maybe I can try to be one of them?
I had a shower. A boy ran past and internally I swore at him for being such a stupid positive Morning Person. I got my stuff ready. The library on main campus is 24 hour, but the buses don't start until 7.30am. Unacceptable. Morning People don't wait until 7.30am: I walked. An old lady with a dog smiled at me and told me how lovely it was to be up before 7am, wasn't it dear. I gritted my teeth and tried not to shout at her.
Now, maybe it was the beleaguered look of vague bewilderment and fear. Maybe it was the deeply shadowed yet slightly bulging eyes. Maybe it was the fact that I kept walking into things.
But somehow... Somehow The Morning People knew.
There they were, organic kale smoothies in hand, gym kits on their shoulders, their hair perfectly groomed and their smiles chipmunk-fixed. They laughed shrilly in their little groups, and then their eyes settled on me. And they knew.
I was among them, I was in the library at 7am, but I was not one of them.

The world of The Morning People is a terrifying place. Gulls were having sex everywhere. I've never seen gulls have sex before. They must all do it at 6.30am. Despite the fact that I had already been awake for nearly five hours and it felt in my chest like noon, the air was as bright and cold as to be unmistakably early morning; the two facts couldn't add up properly in my head. The Costa in the library wasn't open. Normally when the Costa isn't open it's because it's after 9pm, which is sometimes when I start studying. But it wasn't after 9pm. It was just before 9am.
People were asleep on the desks in the library. I longed to reach out to them, to beg them to take me back to their world: I belong with you. I am not one of these people.
I only needed to be up for another five and a half hours - finish the report, do some more revision, attend an 11am lecture, get home without passing out - so I decided to risk coffee as the walk down had depleted my energy supplies more than anticipated. The Costa was still shut. It was shut hours ago... No. Only five minutes ago. Is this how slowly time passes in The Morning People's world?
There's a coffee machine in the basement of the library. I made the decision to buy a latte. It gave me a mocha. Everything in the university is broken at all times. I am broken, now. Whose fault was the mocha? Did I press the wrong button, not notice, or did it make the wrong drink? It asked for £1.30. I thought I gave it two £1 coins. It gave me £1.40 in change. This doesn't answer my question.
Suddenly I'm at my favourite desk. It's in front of a window. Normally the window shows the grey dusk and then the dark night. It's bright. It's an east-facing window. There's bright light shining in. I can't see my laptop. It's not the same desk I sit at normally. It can't be.
I open the report. The words are familiar. Too familiar. I wrote them today. No... Yesterday. No... Tomorrow? I didn't stop yesterday, go home, sleep, and start again in the morning; I just took a six-hour break in one long writing session, with a brief 90-minute nap in the middle.
I need textbooks. The shelves are dark. The shelves are always dark but now the darkness is wrong. It is bright outside. Why are the shelves still dark?
The textbook I want is on a bottom shelf. I bend down to reach for it. My backpack overbalances me. I thought I left my backpack at the desk? I topple backwards. I am a tortoise, stranded between ornithology and parasitology, a textbook weighing down my chest and my boots kicking uselessly on the tile. Perhaps I will die here, an intrusive night-walker in the realm of The Morning People.
I'm back at my desk. I don't remember how. Is this Groundhog Day? I need textbooks. I have them. They're not the ones I reached down for. I sip my mocha. I hate mochas. I got paid 10p to drink a mocha I don't want. It tastes like bewilderment. I write a report about barnacle goose behaviour.
I'm hungry. It's 7.40am. Breakfast-time. No... I already ate breakfast. That was over two hours ago. Two hours after breakfast means lunch. It can't be lunch. It's 7.40am.

At 9.30am, I finish the report. A Gander With Geese: Observing and Predicting Captive Waterfowl Behaviour. It's a pun. A friend helped me make it. We get marks for puns in our titles. I can't remember what's funny any more. It's over 2000 words and twelve pages long. I wrote it in eighteen hours, with one six hour break including a two hour nap.
I revise. Bilateria. Animal kingdom. It's 10.30am. I'm hungry. I've already eaten. This must be lunchtime. No... This must be dinner-time. No... It's 10.30am. Sometimes 10.30am is breakfast-time.

A friend is poking me. I'm sat outside the cafeteria. I have my phone out. I'm making a Facebook post about asking a machine for a latte and being given a mocha. It's going to be funny. Is it funny? A Gander with Geese. I want to tell my friend the pun. She's talking.
"Tatiana didn't sleep last night," she explains to another.
"Tatiana! Why didn't you sleep last night?"
I am trapped in Hell. Why did I not sleep. I don't know the answer any more. I've never known. Maybe I have? Did I know the answer and forget?

We're in a lecture. It's 11am. I'm making notes. Why do I make notes? I know this.
I have a toy duckling named Gull in my hand. So many notes. The lecturer goes onto a tangent. I stop making notes. Someone asks to borrow Gull and I let them take him. The world slips out of focus.
Notes. I must make notes. Only notes and Gull ground me into this universe.

Leaving lecture. "Get some sleep, get some sleep, get some sleep." I promise them I will. I'm not sure who's telling me any more. I finished the report. A Gander With Geese. Is the With capitalised? Is it funny?
I wanted a latte and I got a mocha and I don't know if it was me or the machine. That's funny. It's a metaphor for something, I'm sure.
I'm sure of nothing any more.
The rocking of the bus. Music. Any music. All music.
Student village. The birds. The birds. The gulls sit on the rooftops and stare down.
They know. And now I know, too.
I know what the gulls do at 6.30am that they don't do at any other time. And the gulls... The gulls know... Organic kale smoothies... Gym kits and geese... An old woman walking a dog with a mocha... Something...

I wake up.
It's 4pm.
I am in my pyjamas, I am in bed, I have Gull under one arm and a toy cat called Toffee under the other. And I feel like I imagine The Morning People feel like as they walk down to campus at 6.30am and watch the gulls have sex on top of the dustbins: I feel awake.

My sojourn into the world of The Morning People was brief and it was terrifying. As a student, as someone who works better at night, as someone prone to gradually worsening insomnia, perhaps I will have to grow used to it. Perhaps I will improve my Morning Person disguise until I can slide seamlessly among them.
Perhaps some of those - the old woman with the dog, the running boy, the organic kale smoothie gym kit girls - are simply night-time people with a flawless Morning Person disguise. Perhaps they, unlike me, have perfected the art of slipping into this realm and coming out unscathed.

May God be with me if I ever have to return.

Bernard from Black Books, displaying my characteristic expression throughout the whole of the morning, and also acting as a generally relatable non-Morning Person protagonist

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