Originally published in The Clifton Courier, November 8, 2017

I hate the way my brain decides to deal with my problems.

I had to get up at an ungodly hour one morning last week and this was a source of stress for me. As fate (slash my poor planning skills) would have it, I ended up going to bed much later than I’d planned on the night before this early start.

Of course, I went to bed concerned about the tiny amount of sleep I’d be getting that night.

Generally, being sleep deprived when I have nothing to achieve that day is bearable. In fact, if my sleep deprivation is the result of a night painting the town a metaphorical shade of red, being tired actually puts me in high spirits. Everything is funnier. The presence of any kind of food is cause for jubilation. A simple cup of tea is even elevated to a higher state of glorification than usual (and, as anyone who has every chinked mugs with me before would attest, the level of exaltation I attribute to a cuppa is already bordering on chants of “hosanna”).

But this strange high that comes from a lack of shut-eye is generally limited to Sundays.

Having to be a functional, productive human who wears shoes* and forms complete sentences while sleep deprived is not my jam.

* Look, shoes are great. I have nothing against them. I like that they form a barrier between me, the hot bitumen, the chewed gum and the used condoms one occasionally skips over on a footpath. That’s very noble of them to expose themselves to that grime for my benefit. But sometimes you just don’t want them on your feet. Sometimes you just want socks. 

I either find myself being infuriatingly excitable and talkative to the point that my co-workers want to stab me in the eye with a ballpoint pen (or so I imagine) or being catatonically dopey.

Either way, I don’t get a lot done. It’s not a good workday. Nobody wins.

So given my brain is what controls me, and that “me” is essentially the collective firing of neurons in my skull, what I want my brain to do and what my brain actually does should be aligned.

You’d think that being faced with a limited amount of sleep, my brain would act accordingly. And considering my brain belongs to me, you would think it would act with my best interests at heart.

But it turns out doesn’t have a heart (figuratively speaking, because you could argue for and against a brain having a heart considering it is powered by a beating heart but doesn’t have an independent, internal heart within itself as a singular organ).

In fact, my brain could probably be likened to another part of the human anatomy – specifically, the orifice at the end of the digestive tract.8

* Yep, that was an arsehole joke. One for the adults. And the smart kids. I’m all about the smart kids. I want so much to impress them. 

Because my mind decided to deal with the sleep dilemma by giving me even less sleep.

It woke me up with phantom alarms and jolted me awake hours before I needed to be. It decided to screech, “you’re going to be so tired tomorrow” over my neurological PA system when it could have just run a loop of ocean sounds. It could easily just shut down, but decided that it was the time to practise the emergency flight or flight drill.

It’s almost as if my brain was doing it on purpose to torture me – like it was resentful that I didn’t feed it with the works of Tolstoy or because of how many times I took advantage of $3 basics specials* during its final stages of development.

* But this might be my brain’s fault anyway, I mean, it wasn’t my left knee that reasoned $3 for a shot of tequila was a good deal, was it?! My left knee doesn’t have that kind of authority. 

And when I did actually have to wake up, it decided to “help” the situation by playing Time Warp – one of the top 10 most annoying songs ever written – on repeat. What kind of strategy is that?! It was like my brain was taunting me, rubbing in the fact that I was going to be a wreck that day by making it even worse with the poor song choice.

Essentially, my brain was turning its figurative back on me while also laughing in my face (well, technically from behind my face, if you think about it).

I thought I called the shots up there, but it turns out I was wrong. I don’t control my brain. My brain controls me.

And it seems my brain has a sick mind.