I recently started working a different (very early morning) shift at work. This past Sunday evening I was especially tired, so I decided to call it a day around 7:00 pm. I did my best to block out every trace of sunlight in my room, turned on my sound machine, attempted to read for a little while (about five minutes), then I was out. For approximately 15 minutes. I was jarred back into consciousness by the thunderous explosion of bass notes blasting through my bedroom wall from my neighbor’s apartment…
I immediately recognized the song (“Save the Last Dance For Me”), which is a song I actually like. But never before have I noticed that it has a very pronounced bass part – very cool I’m sure, to someone who is fully awake and alert, but quite maddening to someone who has just been jolted awake by it. This song was followed by several others, and it was during the second song that I realized my poor neighbor must have a hearing problem, because he KEPT TURNING THE VOLUME UP. Seriously, it was as if I had crawled onto the stage of a rock concert, laid my pillow on the bass player’s amp, and decided to try to catch some ZZZs.
Allow me to pause here and briefly describe the inverse correlation between my level of fatigue and my level of patience. I go through stages of irritability when suffering from sleep deprivation. With the first stage (mild drowsiness) I am able to remain fairly pleasant, with only occasional displays of annoyance. Think of a child, perhaps 8 years old, for this one.
The next level (moderate sleepiness) brings out some more, um… colorful…. aspects of my personality. I begin to zone out for longer periods of time, it becomes difficult to maintain focus on anything non-shiny for more than 5 seconds, my irritability seems to be triggered not necessarily more frequently, but more unpredictably. And my attempts at coherent conversation become strained, at best. Here, imagine a 3-year old child who missed a nap or two.
Extreme exhaustion is the final stage, and with it comes such symptoms as a blank stare, a complete inability to focus on anything (shiny or otherwise), and you can just forget about exchanging any type of intelligent dialogue with me. Also, there may be occasional temper tantrums, but only if something goes drastically wrong. And by “something going drastically wrong,” I am basically referring to any and all occasions in which I am forced to do something I don’t feel like doing (obeying traffic laws, standing in line anywhere, or behaving like a civil human being). I cannot provide a phase of life with which to compare this stage. This one may very well be unique to me. But maybe think along the lines of Jekyll and Hyde.
Anyway, I digress (lack of ability to focus… refer back to stage 2 if you have already forgotten).
Now, by nature, I am not a confrontational person. And I really don’t get angry often. Even if I do get angry I’m not going to be “in-your-face” about it. So when the bass notes began thumping through the wall directly into my head, my initial reaction was to calmly adjust the volume on my sound machine ever so slightly. As I should have expected, this did not solve anything other than removing my ability to recognize the songs being played…. thus leaving me to guess what the song was, based on the snatches of music I was able to discern above the now steady “rain” falling 2 feet from my head. So for the next few minutes all of my quickly draining energy was being focused on NOT guessing what song was playing.
Realizing this was going to last for a while, I jumped out of bed, angrily turned the sound machine volume up to the highest volume (labeled “deafening” on the side of the machine), flung myself back into the bed with a huff, and buried my head between my pillows. So my plan to quickly fall asleep to the gentle sound of raindrops pattering to the ground were definitely shot. Instead, I FINALLY drifted off despite experiencing what I imagine I would feel like if I were being smothered to death in the middle of a rock concert underneath Niagara Falls.
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