I've been reading a lot lately about insomniacs, and, frankly, I'm tired of it.  God knows they can't stop whining about how they can't catch a wink.  They're almost as bad as serial dieters.  It's all about them.  Wah wah wah!  I can't sleep!  I can't eat!  Well, will you at least let the rest of us?  Jesus Cupcakes!

I guess I get annoyed because I've had to suffer in silence all my life with the opposite problem.  It's something you don't read about in the Times.  But like millions of people, I struggle with a differability:  I can sleep through anything.  I love to sleep.  I mean, I looooove to sleep.  I love it so much I married it. 

I could easily sleep twelve hours a day in the wintertime, not counting siesta.  (And even in the summer, I struggle to manage the short season of long days by eating less and eating later — since big meals put me to sleep — and being careful to heed siesta cut-off: 4 p.m.)


I can't help it.  I'm a sleeper.  At the end of the day — and often in the middle as well — nothing comes between me and the sheets.  The only thing I can't do — constitutionally — is sleep past sunrise.  I am a slave to circadian rhythm.

Obsessed with those who can't sleep, the scientific community doesn't seem interested in people like me, who sleep remarkably well and often, and function perfectly well on an average of nine to ten hours of peaceful slumber a night and a two-hour siesta in the afternoon. 

Culturally, no one seems particularly interested, either.  The list of famous insomniacs includes the likes of Napoleon and Thatcher, Lincoln and Churchill, Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Marcel Proust and Charles Dickens.  And famous sound sleepers?  Anyone?... Anyone?...  Bueller?

So we suffer in silence (except for the snoring).  It may look like all's well in slumberland, but I can assure you, there have been occasions — too many to count, truth be known — where sleeping so well, so often has interfered with my life. 

There are definite drawbacks to being able to sleep anytime, anywhere.  I have slept soundly in the middle of a crowded bar on a Friday night (true story).  And we're not talking narcolepsy here.  These aren't little "sleep attacks."  I stretch out, get comfy.  I'll rearrange the room if I have to.  It's decadent.  When I doze it's epic. 

I did a sleep study at Harvard some years ago.  It was a good chunk of change and I thought I could handle it.  It was a short one, as sleep studies go — ten days and nights — but the final three* were sleepless.  It was torture.  Worse than waterboarding for me.  Interns cycled in and out in shifts, monitoring me, making sure I didn't doze off.  In the final stretch, as I struggled to keep my eyes open for the diabolical computer tasks that measured reaction time, the young female intern attending me poked me and snarked: "hey, it's not that hard."

Ah, but it is.  I was ostracized for it all through school, where a midnight trip to Lover's Leap could get you laid and all-night D&D was the geek's alternative to getting laid.  Sound sleep caused me years of existential angst — I felt I was sleeping my life away.  The fact that I so enjoyed it made it all the worse, existentially speaking.  I rebelled against it in college by working a graveyard shift three nights a week, totally sabotaging my sex-life (again).  And it has gotten in the way of countless relationships since. 

Sound sleepers and insomniacs make strange bedfellows.  What inevitably happens is the insomniac ends up blaming the sound sleeper for keeping him up nights.  You wake up with bruises where he's poked and prodded you, trying to wake you from your sublime slumber, so you can keep misery company. 

Despite the abuse you still greet the morning refreshed, next to a ragged, evil mess ready to tear you to shreds.  "You snored all night!  I couldn't get a moment's rest!"  

Sleep becomes something you do to deprive your partner of it.  And not only that.  If you do it soundly enough, it shows an utter lack of sympathy for their plight on your part.  And they've had all night to contemplate your utter obliviousness.  And you can be sure they blame you for it. 

Because sleep is not merely a "habit", as we're fond of saying.  It is looked upon (especially by those loathsome insomniacs) as an indicator of moral fiber.  We say, "I don't know how you can sleep at night" to those we deem unscrupulous.  We equate sleepless nights with an overactive conscience.   

Which may be why those who can't sleep often come across as such insufferable martyrs.  They want both our pity and to pity us.  They are burdened by all the deep thoughts and anxieties those of us who can sleep don't have to confront.  It's like they're bearing the burden of conscience for all of us. 

Which has the effect of making sleep a guilty pleasure.  And in a way it is.  Sound sleep is actually one of the highest achievements of civilization.  Of course, both evolution and civilization can certainly be overdone.  And twelve hours of sound sleep a day might be pushing the envelope. 
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* I'm being a little dramatic here — while it felt like three days I think the final count was 34 hours, which really isn't that bad, although some participants in the study were kept awake for 48.