The mind is a strange thing. My memories are bubbling to the surface a lot lately; well, they have been for the last 3 years or so. What used to be considered crazy, scary, or outlandish dreams have actually crossed the line into reality and I’m learning that many of them are real events from my past.
In my earliest days on my own, around 22, and in a new state, I slept the sleep of queens. I could close my eyes and be out in mere seconds. Wherever I was, no matter the time of day, closing my lids was met with very little heady banter. The thoughts that crossed my mind were of cute boys, a fingernail polish color, or my next haircut. Not terribly surprising and also rather boring. Ideal conditions for entry to a slumber.
I always carried a few yucky memories with me. Not terrible but also not great; seems like it was just enough of a reminder that home was my new city and not the place I had left, where I was born and raised. Nevertheless, these tokens from my past stayed right at the top of my thoughts and I could reference them easily. They were always there; part of me, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Each memory from my before-life is a fast snapshot loaded with details. I remember a past conversation with my dad, him telling me at 10 that I’d become prettier since I lost “some of the baby pudge in the thigh area.” This particular thought bubbles up when I’m trying on new clothes, specifically pants. Try as I might, I cannot get rid of it or just chalk it up to my father’s idiosyncratic ways. “He’s from a different generation” never worked either. I can tell you where we were, what I was wearing, the song on the radio, our respective clothing, and anything else you’d like to know about that specific moment in time. I was holding a soda pop (a half-full can of Pepsi), wore cut-off denim shorts, and the frayed pieces of jean material were longer on the right leg, tickling me as I stood there in front of his creme colored Dodge, unsure of what my dad meant. A ringer tee shirt that was white with bright peach around the neck and sleeves complimented the clear colored jelly sandals on my feet. My mind grabs all of the particulars, down to the tiniest and seemingly inconsequential tidbits, and attaches them to my mind like wig pins on a mannequin. So many wig pins. Each one holds a small detail in permanence. Try as I might, there’s no removing the wig pins.
Another recurrent thought centers around my mom. She chewed Trident gum at such frequency that when she was without it, I wondered what was wrong. Smoking or drinking coffee didn’t interrupt her mastication fixation. The speed of her chewing was a quick indicator of her mental state, too. Pearl chewed gum with increased intensity as she started losing her grip on reality. Not just quicker bites, almost like she was speed-gripping her teeth. Conversely, slow, rhythmic snapping of her gum, a skill she honed over time by rolling it between her back molars, indicated she was calm. Things would be ok. She once sat with me and tried to teach me how to fold the gum in such a way that I could catch a small bubble of air between the stickiness and then bite it. Pop! I never mastered it. This memory is different; it comes forth when I hear muted snapping noises or smell minty gum.
These thoughts became my anchors. Though I drifted far away, they tethered me to what once was. I suppose, in that sense, nobody ever really leaves their past behind. Or maybe it doesn’t leave you. Regardless, the mental wig pins cluttered my head and I just got used to them. They weren’t great but they weren’t awful either. They just…were. When trying to redecorate my mind via therapy or some other mindful manner, they’d never move and proved resilient.
As time washed away and I matured into life, certain comforts slowly disappeared. The ability to drift off to sleep faded away. This coincided with bizarre incidentals crowding my mind as I tried to sleep. Weird things. Like I could smell beer. Cheap beer. While laying in bed at home. Children sleeping in the next room and no brew in the house. With each new random thought, a new wig pin attached. Pretty soon my head was cluttered with little details about seemingly random happenings. The interesting thing is that all of these sleep disruptors were eerily familiar; like creepy deja vu. I couldn’t quite place or connect them to anything, but there was a distinct feeling that coincided with each and connected them together. Not foreign but not totally familiar. Whatever it was, I felt it.
As my unraveling sped up, and father eventually passed away, I was totally unable to sleep. My mind raced. Wig pins from all over, attaching snippets I have now learned are part of me, my past. Many didn’t make any sense at the time. Some of them still don’t.
It should come as no surprise that sleep deprivation is used as a means of torture in other places. Why? Because it works. There is nothing quite like the dulled sharpness from insomnia. Life isn’t real. Perceptions are off. It is not life; it is barely existence. When sleep does come, it’s like the body just shuts off. On pause. It’s not restorative sleep. You wake up and wonder who or where the hell you were, drool on your pillow and face, wondering how much time had passed.
Medications became an intervention for me. Reluctantly. But even then, I couldn’t stop the pins from attaching to my interior. Each little pin was fighting a battle on behalf of my memory. Pretty soon, there was a gaggle of them and they held their ground against Ambien, Xanax, and so many other drugs. They clogged my ability to think, fall asleep, or stay asleep. Pretty soon, pins started appearing in my sleep, I chalked it up to stress. Nevertheless, the lack of sleep was maddening and nothing seemed to help. I became desperate.
I read somewhere, a non-medical blog by some random pontificator, that insomniacs should listen to the same music or sound during bedtime. That having the noise in the background serves as a familiar and predictable distraction. Basically, it’s just enough to keep the brain interested in whatever you’re listening to that it won’t busy itself with the damn wig pins. Why? Your noodle knows what’s coming since the sound is familiar so it doesn’t have to worry itself with wondering what’s next. But it’s sticky enough to hold your brain’s attention so that the wig pins can’t attack. It sort of forces a happy place. Or maybe a neutral place. Basically, it was a manipulated state of mind so that the meds could work. I tried for years to find my sleep soundtrack to no avail.
After my dad died and I completely lost my grip on reality, I spent weeks on end in Red Chair. I lost an entire summer. Days with no showers, no food, no interactions. I was not catatonic, but certainly not in a convivial headspace. I began losing interest in everything around me. It was a strange time of nothingness. I wasn’t happy, sad, angry, or worried. I was vacant. No emotion, no feeling. Nothing. And if you’ve ever experienced this before and come out the other end, you know it’s terrifying.
Around this same time, I began watching Schitt’s Creek on Netflix; I stumbled upon it on a nightly death swipe on my iPhone. There was an ad and Dan Levy was prominently placed and his eyebrows drew me in. I was instantly hooked, and that says a lot because I was experiencing my first state of anhedonia. I began consuming episodes like they were oxycontin and I was getting my fix. It was, quite literally, the only thing that captured any part of my attention. Red Chair and I would buddy up and I’d get lost in tales of David and Alexis, Johnny and Moira. Stevie was a paradox that fascinated me, and Roland was perfectly annoying. That summer that I detached from reality and fell to depths I never knew existed in my psyche, the Rose family saw me through months of debilitating sadness, fear, and panic.
The writing and acting on that show is phenomenal, whimsical, and perfectly executed. An incredible distraction from life; maybe it was a way to connect me back to my life. I got lost in Annie Murphy’s perfect inflection when she’d spout, “David,” Moira’s enunciation of words, David’s blissful ignorance about matters of the heart, and Johnny’s eyebrows. And then, I had my ah-ha moment. The Rose’s exploits could provide the perfectly soothing sound to try to use as a mental distraction for falling asleep. I know the script forward and backwards, quite literally. When I hear the actors speaking, I can tell you where they are, what they’re wearing, the weather, and any other incidentals with razor-like precision. It captured my auditory system, my mind, and my mind’s eye.
Imagine my surprise when I figured out it worked. I kid you not. The soothing voice of Moira Rose and her crazy antics with the Jazzagals lull me to sleep every night. The series plays while I doze and has for the last 2.5 years…every night. It is the only thing that keeps my demons quiet and out of what little slumber I get. While it’s not the perfect tranquilizer, it’s just engaging enough that all the wig pins holding memories inside my brain don’t seem to matter as much.
Plus, I’d rather think about Moira’s wall of wigs anyway.
