One day last March, I woke up tired. I’ve remained tired ever since.
I’m lucky my post-Covid fatigue is not as extensive as that experienced by many others; usually I can go about my day unhindered, however foggy. My eyes grow heavy in the warm classrooms of my college’s prehistoric English building, but I’ve only ever fallen asleep during one lecture. I can remedy my tendency to doze off while reading quite easily with caffeine— as long as it’s not the battery acid flavored Monster Energy in the black can, I’m down.
It’s still frustrating, though. I tire easily even when engaged; my best friends can’t keep me from drifting in and out of lucidity on the worst days. In some other universe, there must exist a version of me who pays attention with all of her consciousness, whose wit is quick enough to catch every joke, whose memory is a clear lake rather than a silted-out dive passage.
So I’m careful. I take strategic naps to store my energy for hangouts. I ration my green tea packets to ensure I don’t run out during the school week. It’s been a year; this kind of exhaustion is, by now, manageable.
Lately, though, a different kind of sleep has been tugging at my eyes. It’s not desperate or exasperated— it’s inviting, like a summer breeze through a fresh green forest. It’s the sense of something brighter around the corner, beckoning the same way hibernation encourages a grizzly to rest until the ground thaws and berries return to the bushes.
Another term for this feeling: senioritis.
I graduate college in two months. That’s scary, yes, but now that I’ve gotten into the swing of things with this semester, I feel less like a frightened cat at the vet and more like an excited tiger waiting for the perfect moment to break out of its cage. The work for my classes and my internship has smoothed itself out; I’ve signed on an apartment in the next town over. Really all that’s left to do is pass the time.
And lately I’ve been thinking about how much easier all this would be if I could grizzly bear it out— if I could fall asleep while the river is icy and wake up when the water is flowing again. I think of this most often during ironic bouts of sleeplessness; in addition to my daylight fatigue, I’ve also been cursed with insomnia and chronic nightmares, so I spend many of my late nights and early mornings staring at the ceiling until I pass out from sheer boredom.
How enticing it is, this impossible hibernation. Last Friday, awaiting the ever-distant start of book club at the top of the hour, I rested my head on my hands in the library and dozed off; Margaret told me thirty minutes later when I woke that she’d heard me snoring. Embarrassing. But, miraculously, it was time for book club. Real life fast travel— the stuff of dreams, literally.
There is so much nonsense to do before the world starts moving for me. Readings for classes I’m taking to pad out my schedule, boxes to pack full of items then empty as soon as they’re done. I’ve been thinking about what I can do to swim through time more quickly. Sleep early, wake late. It’s tempting to think about how many hours I could go if I didn’t set an alarm.
But then I wonder how much I’d miss. What happens in the winter woods when the grizzly is asleep?
A week and change ago, I decided to wander around campus instead of trying to timeskip the hours away on my day off. The adventure I had on was one for the history books. I ran between buildings to grab a gold star sticker from Avanel; I sojourned to Holly’s lobby to mend a hole in her leggings and ended up on a side quest sewing up a random boy’s hoodie sleeve.
I was tired the whole day and restless the whole night, and then that weekend, I did it all again. Music, places, people, all of it spontaneous— hours I could’ve spent asleep became hours I spent indulging in tiny, quotidian joys. I made a new friend, Robin, and he asked me if I was a dancer; he couldn’t have been less correct, but the misperception was an honor, not only in its novelty. Gloria and I stayed up until two in the morning watching Bluey, long past both of our bedtimes, and we laughed like little kids at every joke.
I could’ve stayed in. I could’ve slept through the Bluey marathon. And I could try to hibernate until my graduation.
But I don’t want to miss the sparkle on the snow while I wait for it to melt.
real
snorer 🫵