On Surviving a Bane of Sleep

This is torture.

The cacophony rises and abates all around me. I cannot think, I cannot forget, I can only clench my teeth as the pain drills into my head.

This anguish is more than any should ever bear. It is ceaseless, it is agony personified, and it is going to drive me insane. I don’t know how long I can hang on. My eyes are open, but I see nothing.

And after the awful day I had spent, this was the only way it could have gotten worse.

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It was a typical weekend roughly four months ago from today. I was in that phase of my life where I had to do that weekly three hour commute. Basically, I left by train on a Friday afternoon, and got back sometime around midnight, Sunday.

Crappy deal all around. You would notice that there were two nights to be accounted for. Of course, relatives were available. But the thing about relatives? There’s sometimes that total lack of freedom there.

I mean, yes, they’re looking after you. I’m not at all being disrespectful. They offer to let you stay under their roof and eat off their table, and that’s not something to belittle. But you can’t DO anything. You can’t stay on your laptop all night. You can’t have an ice cream before dinner while watching How I Met Your Mother.

And besides, they have their weekly routine, and they were having this dude interrupting their weekend every single week. It might be okay at the start, but I could tell that putting up with me for more than a couple of months was getting annoying.

So that’s why I moved to a boarding room with these five other guys. The place was half an hour away from where I had my course, as opposed to five minutes away like my aunt’s. But these guys were cool; if I wanted a chat I could go up to any of them and start talking. Wanted to watch a movie, we could all get together on one of their laptops. Wanted to be on my own, they would let me be.

Basically they were all a good ten years older than me, and they were all engineering students; awesome guys with a great sense of humor. But they had one annoying trait that all guys have; and that sometimes put a huge strain on our relationship. I’ll get there in a minute.

This was a lousy Saturday. A day full of lectures and exchange rates and dividend payout ratios and I was fed up. I was half asleep on my feet as I shuffled down the street and onto the room.

As always, the place was a mess. Five laptops open around the room, only two attended. One guy was in the loo, and the other two were out. It was takeaway night; basically, every night was takeaway night.

I was basically pooped, but as always, my laptop beckoned. It was already 8pm; a couple of hours later, when Chris Evans wasn’t making any sense and Tony Stark was just mumbling nonsense, I decided that it was time to call it a night.

Closed the lap, wrapped the wires, and then fell onto bed. Or bedding, rather. Five of us, one tiny hall, a bedroom, toilet, and a kitchen. Furniture was an unnecessary luxury, it would seem. Bedroom was the store room, and we all slept on the floor in the hall.

It wasn’t too bad, once you get used to it.

One by one, they ate, washed up, and got ready for bed. And I was in this real tired state where no matter how hard I tried to fall asleep, it wasn’t going to work. I remained awake.

And thus, I was wide awake when the tremors began.

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The snoring.

Oh, the agony.

Oh, sure, laugh. Laugh all you want. But when it’s you lying there, trying desperately to fall asleep to wake up at 5am the next morning, and the floor is trembling under five sets of rumbling snorts… try to see the funny there.

I shut my eyes and tried to block it out. But this was ducking behind a wall while under fire from five different directions. And that wall was crumbling under each hit.

It is beyond awful. And if you think you have suffered a night next to a single snorer, try five. No, imagination doesn’t cover it. Not even close.

I am suffering. The agony; it is killing me. I need the rest, but it’s being denied me. The seconds tick by, and it is one of those times when I realize how precious time is; every second I am awake is one less second I can be asleep.

My eyes are open, but I see nothing. Probably since all the lights are out. But the noise wells up around me and then abates, wells up and abates, and I am growing angrier and angrier.

What am I angry at? Not a clue. But I’m angry, and as the sounds continue to reverberate off the walls and the floor, I only keep getting worked up.

I reach under my pillow and pull out my phone. The display reads 01:18am. I groan and fall back onto my pillow. I just had three and a half hours left. And it was starting to look like I was going to have to count each and every second of them.

The snores rise and fall, and then, something happened. For the rest of my life to come, I would not remember what it was that went through my mind at that moment. I rest my head back, let my tongue relax, and inhale.

I snore. A wide-awake snore.

It feels good.

I try it again. On key with the rest of them, and then abruptly I change pitch, tone and frequency. I alternate my snores with theirs, trying out snore solos and imagining music playing in the background.

I had just resigned myself to spending that pastime for the rest of the night when the nearest of my antagonizers groans and shifts around. One set of snoring recedes from the night’s symphony.

I hold my breath in disbelief. The other four continue to drone on.

Once again I add my voice to theirs, straining louder, with more passion and vigor.

One more wakes up and, with curses foul, he turns around and tries to go back to sleep.

I keep snoring, and a few minutes later, my voice is the only one that drones through the night. I pause, and hold my breath; seconds tick by, and then a minute. Silence reigns.

I am satisfied; I have a little under three hours left, and I fall asleep almost immediately

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In the morning, I wake up at 5am, and the guys around me are stirring. I am wide awake and on time; there was almost no sign of what had happened last night. I jump up and steal the first shower; and as I'm coming out, I hear the pleasant sound of the guys complaining.

“That’s a heck of a voice for a little guy,”

“Was up the whole darn night,”

“Don’t you just hate when people snore?”

I chuckle. Don’t we indeed.

Some advice; if you can’t beat them, join them.

THEN beat them.