insomnia and freudian psychoanalysis

I woke up on Saturday morning at one in the morning, which is when my roommate decided she was going to start going to bed. By then I had been asleep two hours, and was very disoriented as to why I couldn’t sleep. I moved my covers, turned over a few times, and then, finally, got out of bed and took my retainers out to think about this.

Then I went outside in the hallway and wrote a poem, which summarizes what happened next.

are you sick, she asks, in the throwing up way, she asks me, as if the asking will help me somehow realize i need to run for the bathroom
no, i say, i'm sick in the insomnia way
in the its one oclock in the morning and i can't sleep and it's driving me nuts way
sick in the i think i got too much sleep last night way.

oh, she says,
because if you do need to, you know, throw up, you should go to the bathroom.
i go.
i am thinking while i do it, thinking of what kind of sick i am.
right now, at one clock in the morning,
i am sick in the way that its too warm and i want to be cold
sick in the way that my hands won't type now because they are shaking and stumbling over the keys
sick in the way that troubles me, that makes me want my mother to complain to
but i know that it is also one oclock where she is
and calling will not help me or her.
sick in the way i cannot explain
but i know that something is wrong
and i cannot fix it
alone.

when i am back she is asleep, all lights off.
thanks, i say to the darkness.
now i feel like throwing up.

When I cannot sleep, I begin by thinking about stories I am writing, or things that have to be done the next day, and then I move on to boring things, like my blog for this class. And I begin thing about how this feeling of throwing up is probably a symptom of something, and how Lacan says that symptoms (wrong kind, I know, bear with me) are metaphors of another problem. So I begin asking myself, what could this insomnia/feeling I want to throw up be a metaphor for?

It could be from the taco pizza I had last night for dinner, which looked a little iffy and was probably sitting out for a while before I got to it, but then I remember today (yesterday, I guess, it's one in the morning now on Saturday) was Friday, and I was not supposed to eat meat, which, of course, the taco pizza had on it, so perhaps my insomnia is from guilt.

after that I remember that after I realized at dinner I was not supposed to eat meat I began thinking about how lent this year has seemed really short, and that that is probably because I haven't been observing a lot of the Lenten traditions my family has like keeping catholic kosher on Fridays (no meat, fasting) and going to stations. I remember I talked with my brother that afternoon, who mentioned that he was getting ready to go to stations, and also remember that I felt a little lonely after that and wanted to go home.

Then I remember I wanted to talk to my mother, but Jeffery wouldn't get her for me, just like I want to talk to my mother now (as it says in the poem) like I do every time I feel sick. I would go upstairs and wake her up and say "Mom, I feel sick" and she would get out of bed and get me crackers and water and stay up with me until I felt better, but now that I'm at college, I can't just call and expect her to get up because I have an upset stomach, now can I?

I realize that all of these things that I'm thinking about revolving around this pizza are all about home, and then it strikes me; perhaps what I really have is HOME sickness, literally I am sick for home, and it is now manifesting itself physically.

Another possibility presents itself after that, that perhaps the tea I had before going to bed was caffeinated and now I am feeling the effects of that, or perhaps I am detoxing that stupid pizza because it was green tea, and then I am back where I started trying to get this pizza I was not supposed to eat out of my system. before I went to bed I was working on a paper for my chemical substance abuse class about the TV show House and how, during third season, he checks himself into rehab to detox and hopefully get better after he's pressed with criminal charges about his Vicodin abuse, so this may also have contributed to the detox theory, but I also remember that while I was watching house it occurred to me that perhaps my family, since Friday is when USA broadcasts House reruns, is also watching House, and again I am back to being sick for home at one in the morning, sitting in the bathroom wondering if I can just throw up and get this over with and go back to sleeping.

It is nearly two in the morning, and I have reached a new level of pathetic- I have just psychoanalyzed a physical symptom, and in some bizarre, complicated way, it made sense. that still leaves me with the problem of not being able to sleep on a Saturday morning, but that, of course, is a trifle compared to the last one.

I begin to wonder as I sit here in the bathroom that perhaps the reason I cannot throw up this guilt that the reason that it is sitting here on my chest like it is intent on spending the week there is because I do not want it to leave, I want to suffer and sit in our bathroom at two in the morning and write all this down on a clipboard, because somehow this will serve as a lesson in guilt and then I realize that is perhaps one rabbit hole I do not want to go down.

Yet another thought presents itself, that my not wanting to go to sleep shows that I am afraid of what my dreams might be saying to me, that I am homesick and at eighteen years old I do still want my mother and I am not as independent as I seem. and this makes the most sense to me of all of them, (partially because I changed my facebook status to "wants to put off tomorrow as long as possible") which to me is really the scary part, because I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow and it doesn't look like I’m going to bed anytime soon if this is indeed the case.

The point of this post is that I think I understand Freud now. I hope that this serves as a better example than the ones in the book. And yes, don't worry, I got some sleep in the end.