Monday, December 1, 2008

The history buffs won't let me sleep...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I haven't really had a good night's sleep since August of 2007. Suddenly, I began waking up constantly in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. And not once. Multiple times throughout the night. Every hour or two. A good night's sleep is one where I only wake up once or twice. I'm exhausted all of the time and I've decided to figure out why.

  • I had slept moderately at the MANsion (what my roommates called my old abode), though I occasionally had sleepless nights.
  • At the very end of July, I moved in with some friends and my sleep became irratic.
  • In August of last year, I started a semester of almost nothing but history classes.
  • In August of last year, i started my final year of college.
  • In August of last year, I was supposed to have started my student teaching.
  • In January, I moved out and lived with a few other people for the next several months.
  • During my student teaching the following semester, the sleep problems grew worse and my eyes would twitch very frequently.
  • Having graduated, my sleep is still bad but not as bad as it used to be.
  • Having graduated, my eyes rarely twitch, but that doesn't mean they don't twitch at all.
Here's what it looks like to me. When living in the MANsion once I woke in the middle of the night and thought I saw a ghost. When I moved in July, the house the ghost must have followed me. After all, I was the only original resident of the MANsion left when I moved out. So the ghost follows me. It knows I'm taking history courses because it must have sat in my room planning my schedule for the coming semester. The ghost is into history. Plus, as the only college student remaining at the MANsion, it knows without me, it doesn't have access to classes. When I move, it follows.

It's ghosts keeping me up all night, for sure. The house did creep me out a little. And it was always pretty cold. Ghosts make the air cold, right? However, I was living with a bunch of people (at one time I had five other roommates). Therefore, the ghost woke me up, but not often, because it had several other people in the house to disturb. It had many people it could follow to classes. Still, I slept terribly, so I assume the ghost was most interested in history, something only I was really studying at the time. Great.

In January, I move in with someone else. Just one person. The ghost follows me, hoping for more history. I am after all licensed to teach history in this state. Perhaps the ghost hopes I will be teaching history during my teacher candidacy. I don't. I teach language arts and literature instead. The ghost is not pleased, and as such makes sure I don't sleep well for the entire sememster. I get all of the attention because the roommate is neither college student nor history buff. All of the ghost's attentions are on me. No rest for our scholarly shade, so no rest for me either I guess.

I graduate. I move out. I'm living with a couple of people, but still, I'm the one who reads history books, so the ghost keeps his attention on me. Even so, my sleep isn't as bad as it used to be. I assume this is because my old ghost is now distracted by Oliver Cromwell. After all, if you're a ghost who is into history, who would you rather hang out with? A student of history or a historical figure? So while he's getting his primary sources for his afterlife PhD, I'm sleeping mildly better, though not wonderfully. I guess the ghost still needs access to that contemporary historical critism.

Lately, though, my sleep has been really bad again. Perhaps because I've been coming down so hard on Oliver Cromwell, he's decided to back off a little, leaving my history ghost with no one to talk to and nothing to do... except bother me. I never thought I'd say this, but come back Mr. Cromwell. I miss you. That or our ghost is a hardcore restorationist and wasn't happy sharing a place with Cromwell, and because Cromwell began acting up over the past couple months, Mr. Restorationist Ghost is acting up too, which in turn is keeping me up.

Oh ghosts... will you never let me sleep?

You have been informed.

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