On Avoiding Catastrophe and Lacking Sleep – A Review

It has been five days since I’ve slept. I get to work and I’m feeling off. The world seemed titled, but I am mostly okay. Aside from a parent meeting I knew that today doesn’t require much focus from me. So, I give what I can.

At one point my students let me down and I gave an impassioned speech about how they were breaking my hearts. It was then, specifically 12:57pm, that I was finished. All of the energy I had was gone. I stood at the front of the class and looked serious while a school-wide announcement was given, at this point I was on auto-pilot. My mind was asleep, but my body wasn’t.

The rest of the day passed in front of me like strangers getting off a train. I did what I needed to, made phone calls to parents, proctored a test, and helped manage a classroom of 24 kids excited to leave class and head to a school dance.

I sit through the dance outside as a bathroom monitor. My job is mostly uneventful and entirely boring.

Once we’re finished, I help clean up and talk with a couple of people. The conversation wakes me up, and I feel alive.

I felt fine enough to go to the bar with some coworkers. Where I tried to be as awake as possible, it only sort of worked. At some point, the table was talking about “the worst things they’ve done,” and I opted not to answer the question. I don’t know the correct answer to this question, but the ones that came to mind were too sad to share with the class.

It’s a strange moment when you realize that being honest would out you as an injured duck. Some bird with a lame wing. Someone who lacked control when it mattered.

I don’t think I’m broken, but I have been. But I wasn’t ready to make that clear. Even now, on no sleep, feeling like garbage, I didn’t want anyone to think that I thought I had things bad, so I just basically said “no,” to their question.

We all left the bar shortly after that.

I walked a friend home only to realize that the train I needed to take was closed for the weekend, leaving me stranded deep in Brooklyn.

I walked to my bus, but it was too cold. Way too cold. Like couldn’t feel my fingers cold. I checked my phone and it said the next bus wasn’t coming for 15 minutes. And I knew I needed to uber home.

But see, the night before I decided I needed to be smarter with my money and stop ubering home so much. I spent nearly every night this week out, and because of this, I spent at least 30 minutes in an uber every night.

So, I felt like I was breaking a promise. And I guess that’s when everything caught back up to me, because next thing I knew I was sitting on the curb pulling my hair out, freezing, hyperventilating, and feeling like I was going to pass out. I was stuck in a loop, telling myself over and over and over and over that I could but couldn’t take an uber. That I needed to, but shouldn’t. That I had to, but I can’t.

So I called the friend I just left and begged her to tell me it was okay.

And she did.

I don’t like that I needed someone else to tell me something that simple. But my face and fingers were numb. I was seeing things that weren’t there. And having the worst thoughts.

So, I ordered an Uber Pool and waited the 2 minutes to find a driver, staring at my phone the entire time.

Then, the driver popped up, as did where he was picking me up (if you haven’t rode Uber Pool, you can save like $2 if you walk to be picked up somewhere else), and then my phone died.

I didn’t really internalize which street corner he’d be at, I just knew it was north and he was arriving in 8 minutes. The problems of a grid system.

It was at this point I had about a million thoughts.

One was to wait for the bus and try to find a way to charge my phone.

One was to walk back to my friend’s house and just apologize a million times.

And the final one was to guess where the uber would be and do my best from there

I opted for the last, as it sounded the least like failure, and walked north. My head was not fine. My body was too exhausted to move. I walked two blocks North and just hoped.

But after 5 minutes, I got anxious.

It was at this point that I remembered I had a charging cable in my backpack, along with my work computer. So, I turned it on and charged my phone from a laptop on someone’s stoop.

When my phone turned on I was being called by the uber, he was one block up, I got there, apologized, and rode home.

When I got in the backseat I noticed I was still hyperventilating, my heart was doing its best impression of a maraca, and I couldn’t think.

I got out of the car at 11:30pm and sat in the corner of my room, behind my hamper, for an hour. My friend calls, we confirm that we’re both, for the most part, okay. And during that call I did decide that, yeah, I might be okay. So I lay down in my bed.

But I still can’t sleep.

Usually when my insomnia’s bad I’ll practically… “pass out” around 5am. I don’t ever feel rested, I just stop being conscious. Listen, I don’t know how to put this into words other than by saying that it’s like someone hits the off switch on my brain, but not my body.

But that was shortly ruined by an alarm going off in my apartment. My roommate, Omar, and I came out to check what was going on and he said it was a smoke alarm, but it sounded different. Everything smelt weird and I felt really light headed, but wasn't sure if that's because I just woke up. Omar then said he was going back to bed and would fix it if the alarm went off again. So, I went to bed.

It went off two minutes later.

It was really hard to stand up, I was so sleepy and I had a bad headache.

While I was opening the windows Omar went down to the second floor and checked on them, they were acting strange, but they're normally partying around this time. I go down and talk to the guy and he's like "I don't know what's going on." And then I ask his roommates if they're okay and they all seem really lost. Omar did too, to an extent. So I got them to open all their windows and to step outside with me.

When I knocked on the first-floor apartment’s door, I was immediately hit by the smell of car exhaust. It was bad. Really bad.

At this point, I realized I had smelt the same thing in my room too.

It took them 5 minutes to get out of their apartment because they couldn't walk, and wanted to just go back to bed.

Everyone had a stomach ache, a headache, felt dizzy and confused. And I was ordering them around. "Get your coat on," "go outside," "open this."

We’re all outside, and I’m, for whatever reason, running the show. It doesn’t take long for the general confusion to wear off, but meanwhile I’m asking questions, talking to people, seeing if I can figure out what could be causing this.

At some point when I mention the smell of exhaust a second floor guy runs to the garage and opens it.

Sure enough his motorcycle got stuck between gears or something and can't turn off.

He gets on it and rides it down the road. We leave the garage open.

After 5 minutes the alarm stops going off. And we wait another 5 to go back inside.

No one knew what to do, who to call, what was even going on. They all just followed my lead and were equally terrified.

15 people were in this building.

14 of which wanted to go back to sleep and thought the problem would have solved itself.

One of the 1st floor guys called the landlord, and they called a technician who came and checked everyone’s rooms within 15 minutes.

The technician said that if the alarm wasn’t going off for that long and if the motorcycle was running for as long as its owner said it was, he would have guessed we had between 20-40 minutes before there was real danger.

The entire place smells like exhaust still. My head hurts more than it ever has. But it's safe.

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I wrote this at 6:30am, when the Technician left. I called my Grandma, the only person that would be awake, and just cried.

All of us could’ve been sick, or worse. I didn’t know what to do. I got off the phone with my grandma at 7. Then I sat in the shower for nearly an hour. The water was cold. I was still feeling sick. Still crying. Still worried.

But I thought I could sleep. So I tried. Still nothing.

This is twice now. Where I asked for a simple easy weekend. And got something just… batshit.

I spent the next 40 minutes on the phone with a friend. And then finally fell asleep. It wasn’t an easy sleep. It was marked with constant interruptions and I think I tossed around more than an old pair of craps dice.

I woke up at 4pm. It’s now 4am. 12 hours later. And I’m not tired.

Great.

Thanks for reading. Just another day where I’m glad everyone is okay.