On June 7, 2024, I went to a sleep lab for an overnight study. This is my journal entry from that night. Edited September 29, 2025.
It doesn’t feel like it’s really happening until you look in the mirror.
You feel some of the connections and sense them in your periphery, but it’s hard to understand how all of them are part of you. You tangle easily, so your movement is limited. You position what you think you’ll need in easy reach—like slippers on the bed’s wooden footboard.
The sleep center tries to be an establishment of calm, but the whole place feels like when you’ve been up too long—haloed and half-there hallways, simple-gray and white. Rooms. Room with closed doors. A shared refrigerator and kitchen you’re not thrilled about using in the morning because you look like Hell.
You look downright scary. You look like you haven’t slept in days—hair knotted, poking out in weird places, electrodes pulling on your face so you can’t smile.
The room doesn’t feel like a hotel room, but it’s not quite hospital either. Nursing home, maybe?
You can’t find the remote. You can’t scratch the itchy places. And the artwork on the wall is crooked. Well, one piece is.
You can hear other rooms. The walls are thin. The tech—the one who bears an uncanny resemblance to your friend Rory—is going through a pre-check with another patient. You’re a sleep patient. Your sleep is a malady.
You hope you’re going to sleep. But this is the first time in a long time you’re in bed at 10:37 p.m. and aren’t tired.
06/07/2024