The Catastrophic Madness of Lifelong Insomnia
Here’s what it feels like
“O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frightened thee. That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?”—Henry IV, Part 2
Every so often, my brain explodes.
It hits like an express train: a sudden noise, impossibly, cataclysmically, apocalyptically loud. It sounds like somewhere between a detonation and a burst of TV static, as if somebody has plugged the base of my spine into the electric grid and flipped the switch. At the same time, my vision flashes blindingly, like the pure, impossible brightness of the sun.
What feels like an infinity lasts a quarter-second, then flees to air and is gone. The world fades back in. The echoes of the light fade, burning swiftly through a Polaroid-flush of color that dims to red and then to black. I hear the blood pulsing in my ears, my heart thudding in my chest, my bloodstream humming with adrenaline. Every muscle in my neck is clenched taut as steel cable.
What I’m experiencing — sometimes weeks will go by without it, and sometimes it happens multiple times in a few days — is technically called an episodic cranial…
