My Eyelips are Becoming Very Heavy

Oh, hello! It's insomnia, my oldest and dearest friend. Before lunggunk was even a twinkle in my femoral artery, my brain has had a habit of getting my days and nights confused.

I would bet my favorite llama that, during my years of sleepless nights, the thought of dropping dead due to a blood clot has probably helped tick down the minutes between the unacceptable and acceptable times to be awake. However, I wouldn't consider this prophetic...at 3 AM during any given bout of insomnia, I have already run the gamut of illnesses that will kill me or are currently killing me. Years of sleepless nights have allowed my creativity to flourish. Ebola? I had that back in 1998. Necrotizing fascitis? Oh, yes...I came down with that in college after I got a papercut editing a term paper.

At the point of the night in which I become bored with diagnosing my imaginary ailments, I attempt to be proactive and turn my energy toward thoughts of SelfImprovment™. Logic suggests that, if anxiety is causing me to lose sleep, then something in my life must be broken. What past events have led to this point? What can I do in the present to re-chart my course?

Helpful suggestions quickly give way to fantasies of fantastic abandon of any sense of responsibility I possess. Once you peel back the layers of rational thought, it only makes sense for me to sell all of my possessions, move to Ireland, and become a shepherd to live out my remaining days in peaceful, woolly bliss. If, on any given night, that seems like it would be too much work, I start to troll the Social Security website and consider applying for disability benefits. I could spend the rest of my life living on ramen and Folgers, right?

Eventually, even my fantasies begin to be tedious. This is when I spend hours scrolling through pages of shitty movies on Netflix in an attempt to numb my brain with whatever rot Hollywood has recently presented to the universe. Only a fellow insomniac would be able to accurately gauge how many hours I have spent ingesting the intellectual detritus that passes for entertainment in this country.

 In all honesty, watching television shows that even Fox had the good sense to cancel is my preferred method of murdering time. How can I feel any trace of self-pity when grown ass men are shooting teeny, tiny bullets at horribly rendered dinosaurs which, somehow, magically exist?

This effective approach is two pronged: First of all, crappy TV anesthetizes my brain to the point in which I temporarily forget about all of my earthly cares. Secondly, since it wasn't me who created said garbage pile, I feel a lot better about myself. Seriously, I would question my friends' loyalty if they allowed me to produce something like Cop Rock. (OMG, legit lolz at Cop Rock).

When the sun has partially risen and the birds begin to chirp, I know that I have successfully survived another sleepless night. And, of course, as soon as the light begins to creep in my window, my eyelips* effortlessly start to close....

* People actually call them this. Seriously. Search for #eyelips on twitter.