So let’s talk about sleeping pills.
I mean, they sound so great, don’t they? Take this pill and you will rest. You will rest so hard, the instructions tell you, that you probably should not plan on doing anything for the next eight hours.
Except sleeping.
But what they don’t tell you–or actually, I think they do tell you this, but in very very very fine print–is that sleeping is only what happens sometimes.
Sometimes you sleep. And sometimes you drive to Taco Bell in the middle of the night wearing just your bra and panties, and because you’ve left your house key at home, wake up half naked on your porch swing covered in verde sauce.
When I was on Lunesta, it didn’t take me long to figure out that I was going to be one of the 0.003% of patients who experience a reaction that is opposite of that which is intended, aka CAPS! LOCK! MODE!
So instead of thinking:
“It’s late. I’m tired. I should go to bed now.”
I kept thinking:
“I! SHOULD! GO! TO! BED! NOW!”
“OR! MAYBE! PAINT! A! WALRUS!”
“QUICK! FIND! ME! A! WALRUS!”
“NO! TIME! FOR! PANTS!”
“BUT! MAYBE! THE! WALRUS! WOULD! LIKE! TACO! BELL! FIRST!”
After about three nights of this, I was like, Dr. Dude, this isn’t going to work. I need something else. Something that won’t try to turn me into a human fast food taco.
In the meantime, I break my cardinal rule of never reading dystopian and/or zombie novels by picking up both The Forests of Hands and Teeth and The Hunger Games, the former of which because I already had it in my bedroom and the latter because I like to read books before I see movies, and I think the movie looks really good (even though I probably will not be watching it now, thanks to the book).
I want to take a moment to apologize to all the wonderful writers out there who write dystopian novels, some of whom I know well enough to know they are not at all as scary as their books. Most of them are fine, upstanding, cat-loving people who would never eat another human being. The others are Democrats.
HA HA.
BURN.
But regardless of how nice they are, I cannot read their books. Can. Not. It doesn’t matter how good or popular or interesting they are. I. Can. Not. Read. Them.
And the reason why is because they scare me shitless, no doubt due to the fact that my grandmother, from an early age, groomed me to fear the coming zombie apocalypse.
And I wish I was making this up, but I’m totally not.
Except for the zombie part. She didn’t believe in zombies, just like she didn’t believe in Democrats.
My point is, you read a dystopian novel and it’s a book. And I read a dystopian novel and start looking for quotes on bomb shelters.
So picture me in bed, Wednesday morning, unable to sleep thanks to a clap of thunder that woke me up just as I as drifting off, and I’ve just finished reading The Hunger Games. The sun isn’t up yet, but I’ve taken a second Ambien and after thirty-six hours of little cat naps, my vision’s going fuzzy. When who do I see but fucking Effie Trinket in the corner, sawing off her own head, chirping at me about painting the roses red.
This goes on for maybe half an hour–half an hour of hell–and then I finally drift off to a place where I’m the only passenger on a rollercoaster that has no seatbelts and every time I go upside down, the lettuce falls off my taco.
“What do you think that means?” I asked a friend in an email shortly after it happened.
“I dunno,” friend said, “but I hope it’s a euphemism for something dirty.”
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