The Night Before

On the eve of my return to school, I am, of course, confronted with my oldest problem: the inability to sleep.

This mere wakefulness shouldn’t come as a surprise. After two years away from college, going back was bound to cause all kinds of thoughts and questions and anxieties. Excitement, too. More proximately, I’ve spent most of this weekend asleep, incapacitated by a cold I couldn’t successfully ignore out of existence.

So here I am awake. I only bring this up because this insomnia worries me in and of itself. It fills me with dread, the idea that this time will be like all the other times, that I’m broken permanently in my ability to succeed. But this is a late night worry. A demon that attacks in the small hours.

The hero Gilgamesh was only ever defeated by one foe: sleep. The gods of Ur challenged him to remain awake for two weeks, and of course he failed. But his failure will be an inspiration to me: because if Gilgamesh could make a passable try at two weeks of wakefulness, surely I can deal with one sleepless night.