Overdrive, Part I

Fall semester: day ten

It's 9PM on a Friday evening, and I am feelin' it.

No, not in that way, get your mind out of the gutter.

This has been a really long week, a week which I've been constantly "on and running," so to speak, from Monday morning until today, until just this morning.

Let me explain.

When Daisy comes down to visit, I do my best to take care of everything I need to do beforehand, because I want everything else to be able to just stop for a while when she's here. Otherwise it's a somewhat pointless trip for her -- if I didn't take care of my tasks and to-do list before she gets here, she ends up spending hours upon hours sleeping without me or sitting on the couch staring off into space with nothing to do, because I'm too busy to do anything with her. This problem is magnified tenfold when the semester is in session, as I frequently have a long list of tasks to take care of for my students, and those tasks are all important and/or mandatory. As I knew well in advance that she would be coming down this week, I did everything I could before she arrived. This involved cleaning the house as much as I could, reading/making student lesson plans in advance, making sure I had vegan food in the house, making sure we had stuff to do and things to keep us occupied, etc.

I didn't have a choice in most of this if I wanted to have relative free time while Daisy was here. Some stuff has to be done whether I want to or not, or have energy for it or not. So, instead of getting any real meaningful rest last weekend, Monday, or most of Tuesday, I dove in headfirst taking care of tasks. I paid bills and rent. I went out and did the necessary shopping, despite the fact that I did so in the middle of the day and was forced to deal with the blithering idiots who infest my local Walmart during the daylight hours. I vacuumed the entire house, cleaned out the garage with the vacuum and pushbroom, did all the laundry, dishes, kitchen cleaning, sheet-washing, cat-room-sanitation, and other general house maintenance. I spent hours creating handout after handout, assignment after assignment, printout after helpful printout for everything I thought my students would possibly need for two full weeks, just so that I wouldn't have to mess with it when Daisy was here, and so that I could rest when she went home.

She went home this morning, but that isn't the point. The point is that when I'm "on," it really means "Brandon is in overdrive." It's both a mental and physical state that is really difficult to turn off once it's been activated, and leads to all sorts of physical and mental ramifications, usually until I completely exhaust myself after several days of it and crash. And when I say crash, I crash hard. Imagine a drunk waking up from a three-day bender with only the haziest idea of what transpired during it. Yeah, it's somewhat like that. It's not just Daisy, of course; it's everything crammed all together and then Daisy's visit on top of it. I've only been teaching for two weeks this semester -- I have fourteen to go, the last eight of which will be almost constant overdrive -- and I am already worn down, stressed, and exhausted. For example, I'm in a lot of pain right now (I'll get to that later); it's a side-effect of being switched on for days upon days on end.

When I get fired up and switched on, switched into overdrive, a few things happen. For one, I don't sleep. Like, almost at all. I averaged three hours a night, every night, for this past week -- with that average increasing only slightly while Daisy was here, and only then because of exhaustion. I've been wide awake since 6AM this morning, for example, and my body is primed and wired for more despite obvious signs of physical and mental deterioration.

For two, I don't eat. No, seriously, I completely lose almost any and all appetite I have. Last night, Daisy and I made vegan tacos for dinner, complete with a side of nachos with vegan cheese/vegan sour cream and salsa, and a second side of vegan Mexican rice. I ate seven tacos, a large plate of nachos, a decent helping of rice, a beer, and about a liter of Gatorade, since it was over 90 degrees in the house even after night had fallen. It was the only real "meal" I'd had all week, and that's not a lie. It's not because I don't have the time, money, or ability to eat -- it's because my appetite disappears when I switch on, and I go into what I call survival mode. Survival mode means I subsist on a diet of 70% coffee and 20% cigarettes, with the last 10% being a Powerbar, a small sandwich, or handful of chips thrown in there somewhere at least once or twice a day. Bare minimums, simply because my appetite completely disappears. If I eat more than that, it feels like I'm forcing it, or it makes me ill/makes me crash.

I don't know why my body does this, or how this mentality kicks in. It usually doesn't happen when I'm in the second week of the semester, that's for damn sure. Usually I end up turning on around Thanksgiving (in the fall) or Spring Break (in the spring, hence the name) and I'm running at a low-level version of overdrive from that point through the end of the semester as I finish everything up. Last semester, of course, I was running at full capacity and with high stakes, as I had to finish my thesis, study for and take my comps, and complete the graduation process while still dealing with and grading all of my students' work. I'm pretty sure I lost a good fifteen pounds over the course of the months of March through early May simply due to stress levels and lack of sleep or food. This semester, while I'm not dealing with stress levels that high, my body, mental state, and sleep cycles are all completely out of whack because I'm getting up and driving to one campus or another to teach four days a week, which I'm not used to. That alone makes me a bit twitchy and stressed. Throw a four-day visit from Daisy into the mix, a visit that I have to prepare for in all of the ways listed above, and everything goes berzerk.

Note: I am not in any way blaming Daisy for anything I've just described; I love her very, very much and was quite happy she was able to come down. I'm just describing the strange condition I've been in for the past week now. She knows, she understands just how much work I have to do on anything and everything over the course of any given week; she accepts it and lets me do it. If I tell her I'm hungry and need to eat and go to bed -- even if it's early afternoon and I've just gotten home from class -- she lets me do it, because she knows I need it and wouldn't say or ask it otherwise. Daisy is a very accepting person; she knows the man she's marrying, along with all of the character flaws and responsibilities he has. One of the many, many things I appreciate about her is that she doesn't fight me on any of it, and doesn't get upset, hurt, or jealous if I can only talk to her for a few minutes at a time on a busy day, and doesn't give me shit about needing to sleep, do work, or sometimes just turn off the computer and get away from everything for a while. She knows I make time for her, for us, and will always do so when I can -- and if for some reason I cannot, she knows I have a damn good reason for it and leaves it be without issue. This is wholly new and unique to me; I've never had someone like this in my life. In the past, be it in relationships, friendships, or with family or work issues, I always felt like I was being pulled in a million different directions at once, being forced to put up with other people's schedules and timeframes (or having them thrust upon me against my will) before my own took precedence. Daisy's not like that. She's patient and, more importantly, understanding.

Daisy came down on Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday is what I generally refer to as my "short day," as I don't have to leave the house before dawn (I leave around 8:10 or so), I drive through the countryside to get to West campus, teach for an hour, and then hop back into the Monte Carlo to make the drive back through the countryside once more to get home usually around 11AM. It's an easy day teaching a small class on a deserted campus, and I love it -- it's almost a complete 180 from what I do on Monday and Wednesday in the department.

Daisy's original plan was to come down after she got off of work for the night -- getting in the car, driving home to quickly pick up her stuff and the groceries she'd got for us to cook with (generally we go half-and-half on the cooking supplies when she visit) and go. As she gets off work at 7:30 AM, she'd be home and on her way down here quite possibly before or around the time I left the house to teach my class, with an expected arrival time of around 1PM or so. This would give me time to teach and come home, do some last-minute tidying of the house and get a bite to eat, and possibly do a bit of student work to kill time before she arrived. This, as always, is not how things worked out.

When Daisy comes down here directly after work, she does so without sleeping first. She works an eleven-hour overnight shift, which means that she gets up sometime in the afternoon beforehand and stays awake until she gets home in the morning, at which point she usually spends a bit of time with the family before going back to bed. It's a vicious cycle; as you may be aware, I worked night shifts very similar to hers for several years. Anyway, at the very least, without stopping, the drive down here from Omaha is almost exactly five hours. With stops for gas, food, or bathroom breaks, that can easily extend to six hours or sometimes more, which is why when I'm with her, we generally make the trip at night if at all possible, especially in the summer. Going that long without sleeping is nothing new to me -- I work in academia, after all -- but for her, it's akin to hell. Daisy needs a lot of sleep, and frequently isn't able to get it. She becomes sleep-delirious worse than I do when she goes long enough without a good, solid night of rest, and that morning before I left the house, she told me that she may need to nap before making the drive. I told her that was fine, of course, just to keep me posted so that I knew when to expect her. When I got home around 11:30 after a full-length class, she sent me a message a few minutes later telling me that she had napped and that she was leaving. That put arrival time at 4:30 to 5PM, bare minimum. I told her okay and to be careful, as cops were out like crazy trying to fill their end-of-the-month ticket quotas -- I'd seen no less than four of them out patrolling the highways between campus and home, including one which had tailed me for about a mile on one of the back roads, making me nervous until he turned off onto one of the side streets leading up into a housing development.

This put me into a predicament. I hadn't eaten anything since Monday morning -- and even with no real appetite, even I can't go that long without putting something on my stomach, lest it begin to eat itself. I had to eat something, but I knew that once I did, it would make me crash out. Crashing after eating is the only time I get any actual sleep when I'm in overdrive mode, and combined with the oppressive heat (95 outside by around noon) and my lack of sleep -- plus the absolute need to sleep that night to be able to get up at 5AM on Wednesday morning -- I would crash and would basically be unresponsive until long after Daisy's arrival window, which would be bad both for getting time with her and for teaching the next day. But I was stuck. I had to eat something because I was becoming ill.

I made a turkey sandwich with Miracle Whip, provolone, and lettuce, and as soon as I was done with it I began pounding coffee, hardcore, to counteract its effects. As I've mentioned here before, I know I have a window of about an hour after eating before I get too physically sleepy to even sit upright, and of all times I needed my body and mind to remain on, to remain in overdrive, this was one of those times. It took 3/4 of a pot of coffee and some strenuous pacing back and forth around the house, in the heat, before the overwhelming need to sleep went away. Think of it as being similar to someone who needs to pull an all-nighter to study for a test; I used every trick I knew of to stay awake and mobile so that I would not pass out. Yet, while I would remain awake, I was very mentally and physically tired. Not sleepy, but tired. Fatigued. At this point I'd already been on and running for about three days on the bare minimums of rest, food, and downtime, and the rest of the week still stretched before me like a desert I had to cross. The rest of that week also involved spending as much time with Daisy as possible, and staying awake to do so. I didn't know how I would accomplish it. I was exhausted even before she got here, to the point where I could not even fathom spending another four days in overdrive.

I should also add that when Daisy is here, I spend a lot less time in my normal daily routine than I usually do, and it is that routine -- in part -- which keeps me going. My hours in front of my computer, no matter what I'm doing, with my full coffee cup always within arm's reach and a cigarette usually burning in the ashtray is a massive part of why I can survive and stay conscious and lucid when I'm on. When Daisy is here, my normal flow of routine is interrupted. I tend to smoke a lot less, and drink a lot less coffee. When I'm in overdrive mode, that is a very bad thing -- those are my two primary fuels that actually keep me active, awake, and sociable. During normal times this isn't an issue; I work around it, I have enough energy and I'm not stressed, and I can deal with it. When I'm in overdrive and must remain in it in order to accomplish anything, including getting time with my fiancee, this is a very, very dangerous and bad thing for me to have disrupted. 

Daisy arrived around 5PM, happy to be here, and I was happy to have her. By this time, of course, I was beginning to feel more than a little burnt-out, but I knew there was little I could do about it but sleep that night and try to get a little of my energy back. While I do sleep when in this mode, I sleep fitfully and very lightly -- the slightest noise or movement or even a particularly vivid dream will wake me, and once I'm awakened, I am up and running again -- there's no going back to sleep. That lighter sleep is usually enough to recharge me a bit so that I can go about the next day. With a fiancee and three cats sharing the bed with me, sleeping becomes even more difficult, especially when said fiancee wants to lay in the middle of the bed, or diagonal on the bed, or in some other weird position. I asked her if she was hungry, because I wasn't -- but was willing to make her something. She was, and I made waffles for her.

A few hours later, after we'd retreated downstairs to where the AC and two high-powered fans could keep us cool without wanting to die, out of the blue, Daisy proclaimed that she wanted pickles.

"Pickles?"

"Yes, pickles. Do you have pickles in the house?"

"No, baby," I said, "I hate pickles."

This is true, I do. While I love cucumbers, and I love dill, pickles have always been completely disgusting to me. Therefore, I don't keep any in the house. I actually don't think I've ever purchased a jar of pickles for anyone else, either.

"We can get some though," I added. "We can go out and get pickles, if you want. All I have to do is go teach tomorrow, and right now I'm wide awake."

I hadn't eaten any more, and didn't want to -- had I done so, even with Daisy there, I would have completely crashed. With the first, major wave of fatigue and sleepiness offset from the coffee, that coffee had continued to work for the majority of the afternoon and evening, leaving me burnt-out, twitchy and delirious, but completely wired and wide awake. It was getting dark at this point, and I knew that regardless of how I felt, I would indeed eventually have to go to bed and force myself to sleep, even if that meant taking a sleeping pill to do it. Even when I'm in overdrive, getting off my sleep cycles is dangerous -- it means that I cannot function properly during the times that I must be awake, because I have a set schedule during the week and cannot just say "well, I need to sleep" and just sleep. This means I have to power through absolutely everything, even when I run on little or no sleep, and frequently I don't remember most of it afterwards.

I mean, I remember going through the motions, I remember bits and pieces, but because of sleep deprivation and extreme caffeine/nicotine abuse, will I remember lots of details? No, not really. I am awake and functioning in the moment, but after that moment is lost, so is what I did in it. Frequently when I'm in this mode I'll come home and pass out after teaching/classes/etc and wake up not remembering most of what I did that day, or even what day it was. Part of this is also why a large chunk of my undergraduate years at WVU ten years ago is extremely hazy now as well. Then again, at WVU, alcohol was frequently a factor as well. When you can buy beer on campus (in multiple locations) in 6-packs/12-packs and go to the bar in the basement of the student union to begin pounding $2 Amber Bock drafts at 10AM, you forget a lot. I remember one time I bought two beers at the bar's opening, and they said they couldn't sell me the second without seeing the ID of the person I was getting it for -- and they blinked when I said truthfully that they were both for me.

Anyway, I'm getting off-track.

We went to Walmart to get the pickles. I ended up getting some other stuff I'd forgotten when I'd made my rushed trip through there the day before -- cat food/litter, coffee for my office on campus, etc -- and I found a few more dress shirts to teach in on deep clearance, for $3-7 each. Daisy indeed got her pickles -- two different kinds of pickles, actually, and we checked out.

In the parking lot, as it was now around 10:30 PM, I was becoming incredibly sleep-delirious. I had to get up at 5AM to go to work the next day, and I am also incredibly paranoid about leaving anyone in the house when I'm gone. I don't even like my landlord being in here when I'm not here. It's not that I have anything to hide (believe me, I don't; I'm a really boring person) but it's giving up a level of control that I've never been comfortable giving up. Of course, I trust Daisy -- I know that she's not going to burn the place down or let the cats out or do anything like that, ever, but it's not her, and I had to stress this. It's not her, it's anyone. This is the reason I've never trusted anyone enough to come check on the cats when I'm gone out of town (hence why I can never be gone more than about five or six days at the maximum), because not only do I not trust anyone else with my cats, ever, but I don't trust anyone else in my home when I'm not there, and why I lock the place up tight and check every door and every window when I leave.

"You can't really leave while I'm not there," I told her. "For one, you'd have to leave the house unlocked, which is a big no-no, and if you didn't, you'd be locked out."

I only have one key to my house. I don't have spares. If I lock myself out (and I have done so before) I'm truly fucked; I have to call my landlord over here to unlock the door. I can't even go in through the garage; the garage door opener doesn't work correctly and has been unplugged for two years now, and the garage door locks from the inside.

"I'll only be gone for about five hours or so, most of which you'll still be asleep," I continued. "I'm going in, doing my office work, teaching my 011 class as quickly and efficiently as possible, and then I'm coming back home. So even if you do wake up fairly early, you shouldn't have to wait on me that long. I should be home by around noon or one at the absolute latest. The cats should be fine; they have food and water and if you don't see them, don't panic, they're probably sleeping under the bed to stay cool, and I'll leave my room's door cracked so they can get in and get their food bowl--"

"You've told me all of this before," Daisy said. "I don't know why you're so paranoid. It's not like I'm going to do anything."

"I know that, baby, but it's not you. I want you to understand that. It's the fact that someone else is in my home when I'm not there, and that is something that really, really stresses me out. It's not you. Not. You. I trust you. I'm not trying to lecture you, but I need to tell you these things or otherwise I won't be able to function tomorrow due to stress and anxiety."

At that point it really was more for my own benefit than anything else. Daisy obviously felt like I didn't trust her enough to leave her there alone, since I was so incredibly paranoid about it, and that's why I had to keep stressing that it was not about her, that it was about me and my own mental state, my own psychological quirks, my own insecurities not about her but about the situation. I told her it could be my own mother and I would still be paranoid and apprehensive about it. I don't have anything to hide from my mother, nor would she ever do anything to the house or the cats if she were here when I wasn't. It's a personal space issue. It's a complex I have. And when I am sleep-deprived and delirious, all of that stuff gets magnified.

Interestingly enough, I have left Daisy here alone before while I've gone to teach on more than one occasion, and thought little of it, really. As I said, delirious.

"What happens once we're married and we're living together?" she asked.

"It's different then," I said. "It's a shared space, a vested interest, an equal partnership in the same place we live. I never had anxiety with [my ex's] comings and goings, or leaving her here when I was gone, and we lived together for five years in four different houses/apartments."

Again, this is true. I don't know why this paranoia developed over the past several years; perhaps it's because I've lived alone for so long, and my house is the only sanctuary I have to get away from the horrors of the outside world -- the only place I am free of ridicule, prying eyes, and am given the ability to relax and be myself. It is, totally and without question, my safe haven. When Daisy and I begin living together -- whether that's in a few months before the wedding or shortly thereafter -- it won't be an issue. It's only an issue now because I have a my house, my space, my rules mentality.

We went home and Daisy ate some of her pickles, and I allowed myself to eat a vegan burger that she'd brought down, as I was going to bed shortly thereafter anyway and it wouldn't matter if I crashed. We went to bed around midnight, simply because I couldn't stay up any later than that if I wanted to be able to get up at 5. Even if I was delirious and sleep-deprived, I was in that zone where I had to force myself to sleep, and the oppressive heat both outside and inside the house just made it worse.

When my alarm went off at 5, I wheeled over my arm at lightning speed and shut it off before it would wake up Daisy -- and I was once more wide-awake and wired. I came upstairs, made coffee and showered, and left the house at 7, with Daisy still asleep in the bedroom. I had to take the long way around the neighborhood because they were still repaving the streets connected to mine, and I could only get in and out one way. I went to campus, took care of my office stuff (making copies, sorting out handouts for both of my classes over the next few days) and taught my class. Said class lasted a little over forty minutes, as we weren't covering a lot that day -- just some exercises out of the book and some homework assignments in their journal for over the long weekend. On my way back out to the car when class was over, I sent Daisy a text telling her I was on my way home. She didn't respond.

When I returned home, I noticed that the air conditioner was still off. I'd left a note for her telling her how to turn it on if she got too hot (again, blazing heat; it was probably 95 by the time I got home on Wednesday), and it had been undisturbed. The cats came to greet me, but it was as if it were any other day when I was coming home from class -- not a sound, smell, or any other indication that there was anyone in the house but me. I took off my professional work clothes and went downstairs to find Daisy still sleeping. Still sleeping. She hadn't moved since I got up at 5AM.

Must be nice, I thought.

I woke her up gently -- all of my "lecturing" from the night before had been completely unnecessary. She'd slept for over twelve hours straight, and hadn't moved. We'd gone to bed around midnight, and I was waking her shortly before 1PM. Not only that, she hadn't even gotten up to go to the bathroom, nor had she heard me get up, shower, or heard me fire up the loud engine of the Monte Carlo at 7, and she hadn't heard me come back home a few minutes before. She was out like a light, sleeping the kind of deep, hard sleep that I only wish I could get these days. In hindsight, I should have expected this -- the woman barely sleeps when she's at home, and she'd only had a short nap before she drove down here the day before. She needed the rest.

I shall continue this in my next post...