Research In Africa: Sleep Deprivation

(Note: I wrote this when I was extremely sleep deprived. I kept it to see if it made any sense. I think I was on to something. I'm not sure what, but I was on to something.)

Late nights are difficult. I haven't been able to sleep for some reason. I like my sleep, I was getting good sleep for a long time without any sleeping aids (Insomnia sucks, kids. Stay away from it!), but lately it's been a lot more difficult to get good sleep. And it's not as if my body says, "Oh, dude, you couldn't sleep until 3am? We'll wake up at 8. At least you'll have five hours of shitty sleep." Nope. My body keeps its 5:30am wake-up call. Prick.

The most difficult part is when your brain decides to bring up the past. It's as if it wants to you remember everything that happened. Why? What's the point, Brain? It doesn't do any good, it just brings up memories that won't let me go to freakin' sleep. It's almost as if my brain thinks that I will benefit from thinking about everything that has gone right or wrong in my life at 2:30am... because I can do so much about it at that time.

My brain decides to say, "Hey, remember that one time back in like, 2004, and how much it sucked? Let's think about that again."

"No, Brain. Shut up."

"Don't tell me what to do!"

The whole night is like that. My brain won't go away. It keeps talking to me and bringing up stupid memories that it doesn't know are stupid, because it's just a stupid brain that doesn't care about anything but keeping me up at night. Hey, Brain! I'm a college graduate. There's no reason for you to keep me up like you used to before a huge midterm. 

"You know what you never did? You never went to Africa to do research!"

"Why are you so obsessed with Africa, Brain?"

"Fuck you, you suck. Go to Africa and do research!"

It's a back and forth banter that never ends. At least it doesn't until I get too tired to reply to my brain as if it were a completely different person than me. I blame being tired on that. 

Of course, when I finally drift off into a half-sleep, the house alarm computer thing decides to start beeping. What? Why, alarm? Why did you wake me up? It wasn't even good sleep, so there was no reason for you to hate me or whatever alarms do to slumbering people. Nope. It was a half-assed sleep that I couldn't get a full hold of. 

Then my brain started another celebration or something until it finally got tired. It was like a 3-year old child on too much sugary Red Bull who then crashed. I don't remember falling asleep and I don't remember what my brain was panicking about; I just remember that my brain wanted to make me nostalgic for some odd reason. Or telling me that I suck because I didn't do my research in Africa. (Seriously. Why does research in Africa always come up!?). 

Everything feels better once I wake up, however, because I know my brain is just doing late-night ramblings. I think that next time I'm going to sedate it with Benadryl...