Captive by the voices in my head
I haven’t slept a normal night in a year. I blame the pandemic, of course. Since March of 2020, my sleep pattern collapsed into a socially distanced routine, where my time in bed is as further away from me as I can humanely manage. Since The Plague, in many nights I’ve been up for 20 to 30 hours straight. When fatigue hits, I spend 12 to 17 hours in hibernation, waking up like an out-of-shape zombie, with all sorts of pain in the shoulders, neck and legs.
But when it comes to my sleeping drama, that’s not the whole story. The true culprit for my night battles is something much older and nastier than a bat/lab-virus.
In my early teens, with the excuse I wanted to wake up in time for school, I borrowed from my parents their beautiful bedside alarm clock radio. A gorgeous piece of technology and design. Built in a creamy colored plastic, about the size of a chocolate box. Had those white on black flip numbers, just like the ones we see on big old airport departure displays.
Naturally, I had an ulterior motive for the tech-loan. My true interest was not to have a screaming buzzer in my ears at 6 am. I hated that. What I loved was the top switch that moved from “Alarm” to “Radio”. That’s were my secret was.
Radio became my passion
The FM stations were cool, but not my favorite. Yeah, music, sure, why not? Boring! My obsession was the AM arena and its horrible audio quality. That’s where I could hear real people with deep, grave voices — from a lifetime of heavy drinking and non-stop smoking, I imagine. Beautiful.
I enjoyed journalistic shows, back when the profession thrived. The hosts would fill me in on everything happening around the planet. As a teenager, that felt almost criminal. Suddenly, my knowledge of facts and politics was a billion times more opulent than those of any of my friends from school. Their heads were filled with mundane things, like being popular and talking to girls. Absolutely no space for the profound treasures of radio.
One program I particularly liked ran from midnight to 4 am. Listeners would call in and talk to the host about their lives, struggles, relationships, everything. It was like Clubhouse, but fun and interesting. After a few months in I knew every listener by name, voice and life dramas.
Things only got worse when I discovered the magic “SW” button on the side of the radio. I switched it on and, as I tuned skimmed around, I got sounds that I wasn’t expecting. From the mono speaker of the radio, I suddenly could hear programs from distant places in Brazil, Russia, Italy, the UK. Internet was not yet a thing, but suddenly I had BBC broadcasting to my room. Shortwave frequencies were my new drug.
I would tune in every night and place the clock radio under my pillow so I could listen without alerting my parents. Eventually, I ditched the secret. Everyone in the house knew that I was up listening to my late-night friends. And that was my night, every night, for years and years to come. I was in love with radio. And I would never sleep properly again.
Flash forward some three decades and here I am, still not sleeping and still listening, not to the radio, but everything else. From an audiobook with Churchill’s most notable letters to a podcast about the American mother who took her kid to the arms of ISIS, in Syria.
My love for permanent voices in my head remains. My fight with sleep is at its peak. The Pandemic didn’t create it. Only made it worse. Yesterday I woke up at 11 p.m. Yes, you read it right. From going to bed at 3 p.m.
I need to change that.
Today, I woke up early in the morning. A twist of fate, of course. Since I spend most of my waking hours glued to my computer, working or procrastinating, I decided to take the opportunity and go out for a walk. To see the sky, the trees, the sunny weather.
The day was beautiful.
On the way back home, a surprise. By the wall, shining in blue and aluminum, there was Mr. Robert’s walker, parked outside his door. I was wrong about his fortune, it seems. The Sun is out for him too.
It’s time to sleep. I’ll just pick something to listen first. Good night.
Before you go, I want to ask you three things:
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