Singled Out: Insomnia, 'Marley and Me' and the Inevitable Tears

The warning label on the orange prescription bottle read "take one pill at bedtime as needed only when you are able to get a full night's sleep (7 to 8 hours) before you need to be active again." Well last Saturday I was certainly more than able to dedicate eight hours to a nighty-night with the angels. For over a year now, I have been carbureting on an average of four hours of sleep religously and quite punctually waking up on a daily basis at the crack of dawn -- that would be 4:00am (PST) to be precise.

I figured it's the weekend and, if anything, it wouldn't kill me for once to join the hordes of normal people who take advantage of Sundays to sleep in. Granted, I debated for a second over the primordial psychological matter of life or death question regarding the likely disruption of my habitual gym routine which would evidently be happening as a result. Mind you, I was quickly convinced to give my bed precedence over the treadmill courtesy of that ingeniously cute Ikea TV commercial, starring Venida Evans as the cynical muse, which totally sold me on the notion that scratching a few hours of sleep wouldn't be the end of my world -- evidently 24 Hours Fitness would still be there whenever I would wake up.

So at about 11:30pm on that Saturday I popped one of the purple pills in my mouth, tucked myself into bed and waited for my highly anticipated dozing off session. I calculated that by 7:30am I should naturally come out of my self-induced coma, which would give me approximately 30 minutes to get ready and still be at the gym at what I consider to be a reasonable hour -- just a few short tardy minutes past the officially opening.  

I will confess I did have some reservations about these pills as I had read that a potential side effect could result in sleep walking. As a matter of fact, one particular story mentioned the case of this gentleman, who under the spell of Ambien had indulged, unbeknown to him, in an eating binge totally devastating his fridge in one single seating. Needless to say, I wasn't quite sold on the idea of possibly morphing into an ambulant Ambien night howl. God only knows what my outrageous limitless creative self could unconsciously pull out of my hat -- I mean, I 'm already quite a impressive public danger when fully alert, can you imagine the stuff I'd come up with in a state of somnambulism?

I pondered over the potential danger for about a second and preferred to choose the easy way out: DENIAL.  Actually it was more of an egotistical impulse based on my "it won't happen to me," delusional mantra.

And guess what? Well my plan didn't quite pan out as expected and I am not happy to report that I was one of the exceptions. My nocturnal ass was up at 4:00am sharp ... as usual.

So much for sleeping under the influence of sedatives! Either I am totally immune to the chemicals or else I was simply an innocent victim of this medical travesty better known as the placebo effect. Either way, the bottom line was that the pills failed to deliver their promissory advertised rewards.

Yet,what aggravated me the most was not so much that I had not met my targeted 7:30am deadline but that I bothered to waste valuable time to mentally prepare myself to try something different and out of my comfort zone. Do you know how excruciating it is to find peace of mind in the idea of being daringly adventurous and taking the courageous leap to shake around your whole Sunday morning agenda?

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Since I was restlessly up with no remote possibility whatsoever of resuming any sleeping beauty rest, I opted to put my time into good use. After all I had four hours to kill before the gym would open and figured I should perhaps devote a few hours to an intellectual workout of some sort. Accordingly, I decided to catch up with my "now playing at a theater near you" movie watching extracurricular hobby and browsed my swag bag of flicks falling into my "definite rentals" category -- you know the types of movies you couldn't even pay me to bother watching on a big screen. I guess it does help to have an important friend who works at one of the major film studios in town -- at least I get spoiled with a shit-load of promotional advanced copies!

As I perused the palette of my colorless cinematic options I inexplicably talked myself into viewing Marley and Me. I stress the word "inexplicably" because, to this day, I have absolutely no idea what bug bit me to even give this movie the time of the day. Let's face it, not only do I affirmatively detest Owen Wilson as an actor but I am absolutely not an adept of movies revolving around faun and flora storylines -- that includes any breed of animals in live or animated formats.

Anyway, back to my Sunday impromptu early bird screening, I did masochistically put myself through a120 minutes of Aniston/Wilson and Marley odd ménage a trois airtime.

While to my great surprise the movie flew by like a breeze, suddenly the unimaginably abominable happened. Somewhere around the last 10 remaining minutes, I went into total shock: my entire body started to tense up, my temples pressed so hard against my brain I felt like my head had split open, and uncomfortable shivers of an unidentified emotion skyrocketed up my spine.

"What the fuck is happening to me?" a choked-up impostor Mona said as tears whimsically welled up behind my designer prescription glasses. "What is this salty watery discharge streaming down my eyes?" I rhetorically asked myself immensely annoyed. "Me? Crying? That's preposterous!"

SPOILER AHEAD

Yet as hard as I kept trying, somehow I couldn't stop the pathetic sobbing and interminable "cry me a river" session I found myself trapped into as I watched the final scene where Wilson's character puts Marley to sleep -- sorry if I ruined the ending for some of you. Then it dawned on me that I had totally become emotionally involved with the story and perhaps even worse with Marley -- the four-legged, big, dopey, untamable Labrador. Of course my sarcastic smart-ass evil twin couldn't help but think that at least someone would reap the benefits of a self-induced L...O...N...G  good night sleep, but that demonic thought dissipated even faster than it came. That was right about the time my little pup jumped on my lap and sank his head in my crotch in an instinctual attempt to console me.  

Give me a break! A dog was costing me a deluge of tears? Surely this couldn't be real.

I'm not even your typical dog owner who walks around carrying in my wallet a multitude of photos of my Georgie, flaunting them in people's face on every and any occasion I get. Yes, I love my dog and do at my own personal discretion, secretly, call him "my son," but I refuse to turn myself into another cliché statistics part of the stereotypical world of urban legends where crazy lonely cat ladies go cuckoo with old age speaking to their furry companions as if they were actual human beings. I don't think so!

This was disturbing news to me and seemed totally capricious and arbitrary. How did I let an animal affect me so melodramatically? For God's sake, I didn't even weep during Titanic -- hmmm maybe that's because I fell asleep and didn't actually see that movie. But you know what I mean! I'm not a sissy and don't bruise easily. It's not that I am emotionally numb. I'm just highly allergic to sappiness and cheesy sentimental tragedy.

I thought I had immunity against public display of vulnerability. What could possibly justify such a degrading spectacle? - Unless, all of this was not really me?

Perhaps I was still sleepwalking or else I had at last woken up!

Missed the last Singled Out? Read it here.