Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

Remember when you were a kid, and your parents imposed this insane idea of a ‘bedtime’ on you?

“Why would you want to go to sleep,” you'd wonder, either aloud or to yourself, “when there is all this time in which to read, watch movies, or play games? I'm not even tired! I could be using this valuable time! It's the best time of day, after all. No school.”

At some point you grow older and realize that as much as your parents were looking out for their young'un—making sure you could grow your tallest, act your brightest and perform in your curricular and extracurricular activities to the best of your ability—they also were furtively trying to hang onto that last shred of sanity, just trying to go to sleep themselves.

In short, you feel what your parents must have felt when trying to get you to just go to bed, already—really. fucking. tired.

I have fallen asleep on the living room couch twice just this week. Fallen asleep like out cold, for the night. This alternates with bouts of insomnia that only allow me 4 hours of sleep many nights. Hence the eventual uncontrollable drowsiness.

For a little while this didn't bother me so much as perplex me. Four hours a night, often even less, was pretty much the schedule I kept in my high school days. I'm not that much older. It's not as if I'm nearing 30, or 40. I'm 22. I'm supposed to be in the prime of my life!

Then it dawned on me. The reason I was able to do that in high school is two fold:

1. Lots and lots of sleeping during class, such as each and every one of my first period Algebra II classes.
2. An excessive (like, uncontrollable shaking excessive) addiction to caffeine pills

My refusal to get back on harsh stimulants and my employer's refusal to let me sleep through my shift, compounded with being 6 years older, means that if I get no sleep I can feel it each and every day until I'm caught up.

I'm not complaining so much as I am fascinated by my own selective memory—I had pushed out all the coping mechanisms and left some sort of invincible Jenna in their wake. It's nice to realize that I haven't lost any kind of special power. I've simply gained some judgment.