In my previous post, i was just about to disclose something an old friend (Heather, now known as Auburn) said to me. It pertained to some previous behaviors of mine and given the time since those behaviors, i really shouldn’t be reserved about bringing it up.
But the more i thought of it, the more uncomfortable the thought of bringing it up became.
But here’s what I will say- during the 28 or so years that my obstructive sleep apnea consumed me, living became an exercise in subsistence… of survival. I lived nearly 3 decades getting two and a half hours of recuperative sleep a night – and very likely far less some of those nights. I remember one time when i’d moved to Portland, i was working a night shift. It was probably the absolute worst thing i could have done to myself at the time as to this day i’m still unable to get recuperative sleep when the sun is out.
I remember going to work and getting a passdown from the previous shift operator. I knew every word that was coming from his mouth but i was unable to understand any of it. My customer service skills were great but i was a terrible match for that job and not getting recuperative sleep was why i was eventually fired.
But the problem began many, many years before that. If i had to guess when it really began to manifest, i’d say it was my junior year of college; maybe even my sophomore year.
Working at Motorola in a wafer fab as i did for more than five years was particularly grueling. I was tasked with doing visual inspections of wafers which meant prolonged periods of sitting and staring in a microscope. And nearly every day was a brutal struggle to maintain consciousness… especially after lunch.
I’d get back to my station, sit down and immediately start dozing off. I’d briefly lose consciousness and bang my eyes on the microscopes optics. People laughed at me. My supervisors hated me – which on that note, at least there was symmetry.
In stop and go traffic, especially the likes of which i used to deal with on the lower deck of I-35 in Austin, i would constantly be nodding off in the stop and go traffic. How i managed to never rear end anyone or cause an accident is a mystery for the ages.
What i’m getting to in my usual roundabout way is that every day… every goddamned day was an existential struggle to stay awake. And it had another effect – the only things that were accessible to me were: eat, sleep, work and fuck. It left me incapable of accessing anything beyond those and the only way i got through work was just sheer, mindless and brutal determination.
It also left me, and to my eternal shame, unable to recognize, let alone take accountability for my own shit. Eventually that bill came due in many forms – jobs lost, job opportunities lost and worst of all, it alienated the love of my life from me and she would eventually leave me. I can’t take full responsibility for that, i have to take responsibility for the part that was mine.
And i suppose i’m still paying for it to this day. I never became what i could have been but more than that is the ever lingering question that as i’m staring down the barrel of 60 years old and having never been married and not even having a date since 2017, and this growing disconnect i live with, which was discussed in a previous entry. I have to wonder- is there just something fundamentally wrong with me? I suppose that’s a discussion best suited for a professional counselor but i will say that i feel like i’m in a good place, emotionally speaking but dating in north Whatcom County is kind of difficult; made more so with fucking President Yamtits pissing off all of Canada (except maybe Alberta- aka The Province of North Texas).
I can’t remember how much i’ve written about the 28 or so years that my obstructive sleep apnea took from me. I know i’ve written about it but i can’t recall if i’ve written about it in this way. It’s not just the things that i missed and the things that i couldn’t see. It’s the lack of emotional filters that left me, again to my eternal shame, impulsive and obsessed with the most banal of things.