Ariel Horn: Sleepless, saddening nights

The second semester of my sophomore year, I simply forgot how to sleep.

Up until that time, I had been a "normal sleeper." I used to crawl into bed at night and instantly pass out. The next morning, I'd barely be able to remember even what time I had gotten into bed.

But come sophomore year, I began to dread bedtime. After a couple of sleepless nights, I thought I could control my inability to fall asleep.

Maybe there were too many noises in my apartment and earplugs were what I needed? Maybe it was too bright in the room? I blindfolded myself with black tights after I put my earplugs in -- looking, as one roommate described, like a person about to be executed.

A month after that, I was still tossing and turning in bed at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m., frantically calling anyone who was willing to listen to me bitch and cry about not being able to fall asleep. (You can imagine how thrilled the lucky recipients of such phone calls felt.)

By February, there was nothing I wouldn't try: I recited all the lyrics to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in my head. I massaged certain parts of my feet. I took Sominex or Tylenol PM every night. (Yes, they're habit-forming. Don't believe the box.) And I even asked every single person I knew about the most boring book they had ever read. Then I bought them.

But sleep literature's demand that I create a "bedtime routine" ended without success: listening to Pachebel's "Canon in D" or, worse yet, the CD "Baby Lullabies" for an hour every night before bed ended up pissing me off, not making me sleepy.

By March of sophomore year, I was convinced that I was doomed to a lifetime of insomnia. It felt like everyone else on Penn's campus was comfortably snoring away as I was left to suffer a unique form of hell where I wasn't allowed to sleep, but rather only to think in circles endlessly from midnight until dawn about the menial, mundane events of my days.

So on a freezing cold March day at 6 a.m., as I lay in bed crying out of frustration that I couldn't fall asleep, I decided I needed serious help. I got dressed, and walked to Counseling and Psychological Services -- Penn's counseling service, right across from the Bookstore. I sat outside and waited on the sidewalk for three hours for them to open.

At 9 a.m., I checked myself in for an "immediate appointment." I was embarrassed that I had to go to counseling, that there was something so wrong with me that I was no longer capable of sleeping like a normal person. What the hell was wrong with me?

What did I get from counseling? I learned some "breathing techniques" that would allegedly help me relax.

But more importantly, I learned that not being able to sleep for months on end is a telltale sign of depression. At the time, I thought that I was depressed simply because I couldn't sleep, not the other way around. But in thinking about it days after that appointment, I had an epiphany: "I'm not sleeping because I'm too busy thinking about things in my everyday that upset me. Wow: I am miserable!"

The irony is that despite my insomnia and depression, I seemed like a normal, happy person to everyone around me. I was as outgoing, cheerful and talkative as usual, on the outside. People who knew me -- even my closest friends -- couldn't tell that I was unhappy. I didn't let anyone know what I was really feeling, even lying to myself about my own "happiness."

By junior year, I could sleep again, and miraculously, I felt happy again at Penn. Ironically, that six months of sleeplessness and depression was just like a bad dream.

However, while my sleepless and depressed nights at Penn are over, hundreds of other students on campus suffer the same problems, thinking that they are the only ones.

There's no flawless system to universally prescribe happiness, or to make sure that everyone at Penn feels content and fulfilled by their lives. There is no way to guarantee that every Penn student will seek help before doing something drastic. What we can do, though, is pay attention to each other. And we can also realize that being depressed isn't "wrong" -- in many ways, it's normal.

Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie wrote, "Be compassionate... and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much a better place."

Maybe it's time for that responsibility.

Ariel Horn is a senior English major from Short Hills, N.J.

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