Exhaustion

I woke up this morning to sound of a blaring, horrid, teeth-grinding alarm. You know how a night without sleep usually doesn’t hit you until two days later? This morning was two days later.

Due to a work issue I don’t want to get into for legal reasons–it’s a miracle I’m not being sued right now–I ended up working from 3:00pm on Tuesday until 7:00am on Wednesday. Then, back in again at 3:00pm Wednesday for another full shift.

When I’m awakened from a very deep sleep, usually when it’s impossibly early or I’m incredibly sleep-deprived, large portions of my brain refuse to function properly for at least half an hour after I’m “awake.”

I was determined to make it to Tae Soo Do at noon, and forced myself into the shower. One of the stranger effects^* resultant of my partially-online brain is that I stumble, twitch, and jerk like a drunken marionette. It took me two tries to step into the shower. Once I was there, I stared vacantly at the faucets. I had no idea what purpose the shower served, nor why I had managed to force myself there.

Eventually, I managed to clean myself and put in my contacts. Still too sleep-weak to stand for more than a few minutes, I laid down on the bed to try to rest for a bit before breakfast. After a brief battle of willpower versus exhaustion, I fell back asleep.

When I woke up four hours later, I was in exactly the same position as when I fell asleep.

^*Another is that unfamiliar and aggressive stimuli cause me to react immediately and with surprising violence. Apparently, it’s a lizard brain reaction of fight or flight. I once smashed a hotel-room alarm clock as hard as I could until it stopped making noise, then turned to see my then-girlfriend staring at me in mute terror.