“When I was a child, I was drawn to the mystery of sleep. I imagined it as a land with no homework, no bad meals, no organ lessons, no pain or self-denial or tears. When I was eight years old, I was thinking of running away from home. I no longer remember why. The reason was probably something insignificant—a bad grade on a test or the fact that I was the only one in the class who couldn’t do a pull-up. I decided to run away in search of the land of sleep.”
“That was quite a plan for an eight-year-old.”
“I put it into effect one Sunday when my parents were away at a wedding. My nanny was in the hospital for gallbladder surgery. I found a bottle of sleeping pills in a drawer in my father’s desk. I had seen him take a pill every night before he went to bed. I don’t remember how many I took that day. I certainly intended to take as many as possible, but it was probably just four or five. But soon I started to feel sleepy, and I let myself drift off, satisfied that I’d taken enough to ensure that I would be going to the land of sleep and would never return.”
“So what happened?” R asked, his tone careful.
“Nothing, really. I slept, of course, but there was no world of sleep. Just darkness stretching out in every direction. No, that doesn’t quite capture it. It wasn’t even darkness. There was nothing, nothing at all, no air or noise or gravity—not even me to experience them. Just overwhelming nothingness. It was evening when I woke again. I looked around, wondering how long I’d slept. Five days? A month? A year? The windows were dyed with the colors of the sunset. But I realized almost immediately that it was the evening of that same day. My parents had come home from the wedding, but neither of them seemed to realize that I’d slept the entire day. They were animated and wanted me to taste the cake they had brought home from the reception.”
“The pills didn’t make you sick?”
“On the contrary, I felt refreshed after so much sleep. Which made the whole thing worse. Perhaps they weren’t sleeping pills at all, but just vitamins or something. In any case, I never made it to the land of sleep or anywhere else—like the snow vanishing into the sea.”