26 May 2018
Long ago, I used to read and write as I waited for the moment of sleep. Soon I had to stop. Reading led me to a state of overexcitement: usually, one reads a few pages to fall asleep more easily, but the more I read, the more sleep passed me by. And it wasn’t a question of the quality of the books. Mediocre books, great books, novels, essays: sleep eluded me. Reading brought on a desire to write, and writing brought on a desire to read. The night passed without me closing my eyes and the next day was wasted. I was in a daze, I had a headache, I couldn’t do anything.
It took me a long time to resign myself to the idea that, after eight o’clock at night, I shouldn’t open a book, and I shouldn’t write. It seemed a serious limitation, but it was necessary—not sleeping took away the desire to live. So I gave in, and for a while things improved. But during periods when I was writing for almost the whole day, my insomnia returned, and in a way that frightened me. I was sleeping but had the impression that I was still writing, words and words.
A doctor once told me that, even for reading and writing, you need a certain kind of body, and mine wasn’t the right kind: it couldn’t sustain the effort. So, having completely stopped reading and writing, I systematically exhausted myself with everyday things.
After that, I realised that writing and reading had little to do with my insomnia: I still had trouble sleeping. A fleeting half-thought was enough to open the door to an obsession: fears for my family, jealousies, dissatisfactions. In the dark, eyes wide open, I analysed in detail my behaviour and that of others; I convinced myself of disloyalties and betrayals. In other words, the late hour, when everything should grow dim and vanish, consigned me to an intolerable lucidity about myself and the people I loved, and who I thought loved me.
At around the age of thirty, I began taking sleeping pills. But, however potent they were, I managed to sleep at most three or four hours a night. At one point, I thought that surrendering completely to insomnia would help me more than the pills. So I went back to reading and writing whenever I wanted, and often didn’t even go to bed. Today, I don’t get much sleep at night, but I get enough in the early afternoon. If I like what I’m reading or writing, I don’t close my eyes. If I don’t like it, I fall into a disappointed, dissatisfied sleep. I’ve given in to insomnia and I get my sleep how and when I can. All in all, I’m doing fine.