When the going gets tough, the tough take a nap. ~Tom Hodgkinson
The first time it happened, I woke up in Kellie’s apartment, all alone and confused. The last thing I remembered was being at my apartment, waiting for Frank to come home. Soon the rest came back to me. He had taken my car while I was in the shower, getting ready for work. He left a note for me on the mirror above my dresser that said, “Albertson’s. Right back. F.”
Albertson’s was 100 yards from the apartment door-to-door, but he never went there for anything. He wouldn’t have taken my car for a quick trip to the store. Instead, he would have moaned about whatever he was craving until I stopped what I was doing and drove to the store for him, even if it made me late for work. Taking my keys while I was in the shower guaranteed that he wouldn’t be home for hours.
I called his phone. Predictably, the call went directly to voicemail. I sent a text I knew he wouldn’t answer: “I need my car for work.” I continued getting ready for work in case Frank proved me wrong.
The irony of the whole scenario was infuriating. I had pawned the title to my car to get Frank out of jail. Frank promised to pay off the loan but hadn’t paid anything. I had started seeing clients again so that I could pay the note myself. Frank didn’t want me to work, so he had been making it difficult for me to get to my sessions. My lender was breathing down my neck with repossession threats. I was going to work to save a car that Frank kept taking, so I couldn’t go to work. What a circle jerk.
Hours passed, but there was no sign of Frank. I changed from the dress I intended to wear to work into leggings and a tank top. I’d washed my face and called my client to apologize for canceling at the last minute. I offered him a discount to encourage him to reschedule sooner rather than later.
I was furious with Frank, but I shoved that feeling down to the pit of my stomach. Frank would never acknowledge my anger or any other emotion. After that, I walked the floor as I wept and raged, called and messaged Frank, alternately begging and demanding he come home with my car, over and over and over again.
I started calling and texting the girls he was most likely to be wasting time with. All of them were my “friends.” Those I was able to reach hadn’t seen him, or so they said. I didn’t believe any of them.
I was completely unhinged. I had a complete meltdown. I ugly-cried myself into hysterics, begging and pleading for his return. Sunrise came with no sign of Frank. Eventually, I cried myself to sleep, bawling on the kitchen floor.
I woke up to what sounded like Frank coming in the front door. I jumped up and dashed to the living room. Frank wasn’t there.
But he had been… A brown paper sack was on the coffee table, next to the bogus note from the day before. I heard a car door close below my balcony. I rushed through the sliding glass door just in time to see my car turning right out of the parking lot. There was a girl in the passenger seat, but I couldn’t tell who it was.
I opened the paper sack. It contained a Mt. Dew, some candy, cigarettes, new lighters, a glass pipe, and enough meth to hold me for 2 or 3 days. The care package was a message telling me that he was going to be gone even longer than usual. Somehow, that helped me reconcile my sense of being stranded (maybe even of being abandoned). I felt some of the panic in my chest subside, so I was almost calm when I sat on the couch to smoke and plan how to move out as soon as my car came back.
An hour later, I was on my laptop, answering emails and reaching out to long-time clients, trying to arrange a few appointments so I would have money when I left Frank. That’s when my phone rang. The caller ID said it was Frank, but when I answered, it wasn’t Frank, just his phone. He must have dialed on accident. I could clearly hear where he was, though. He was at Kellie’s apartment. Kellie lived within walking distance. I muted the conversation on my end and put the call on speaker while I changed into jeans and sneakers. I couldn’t make out everything they said, but I picked up that they were getting ready to go to the club district. I had plenty of time to walk to my car. I just had to overcome the anxiety that was squeezing my chest first. It took about twenty minutes, but I was able to calm down enough to get out the door.
I kept hyping myself on the walk. This time, I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. This time, I was going to stand my ground. This time, Frank was going to regret all the ways he’d disrespected me. By the time I knocked on Kellie’s door, I was holding my temper steady just below a rage.
The girl who answered the door wasn’t going to let me in because she didn’t know me, but she was the girl I’d seen in the passenger seat of my car earlier. Kellie heard me pushing my way into the apartment and jumped up to take the girl down the hall and put her in the bedroom.
My palms were sweaty, and I could hardly hear anything above the pounding of my pulse in my ears when I asked Kellie to give me a minute with Frank. He looked up for the first time as Kellie made her way to the bedroom and shut the door.
“Give me the car keys,” I said to Frank as he nodded to the seat beside him, holding a pipe he’d just loaded. I sat down across from him and held the pipe. He turned on his toxic charm, but I wasn’t falling for it. I asked for the keys again, telling him I was immediately moving out of the apartment. I handed him the pipe without hitting it.
Frank pulled the keys out of his pocket but wouldn’t hand them to me. He was telling me that it wasn’t the right time or place to talk about our relationship when my eyelids started getting very heavy, and my head started nodding. I was so very sleepy all of a sudden. I struggled to focus on my anger as my eyes kept trying to close.
Frank was explaining to me that he didn’t like me coming over to Kellie’s apartment and embarassing him in front of his new “friend girl.” I demanded the keys one more time and started to stand up to take them from him.
I woke up all by myself. I listened carefully to the sound of the apartment but heard nothing. It took a few minutes to think through the events that led me to Kellie’s apartment. Looking around, I saw that the drugs had been put away, and the girls’ purses were gone. I looked at my phone. It was just after midnight; Frank and his entourage were probably arriving at the club at that moment. I was only a few blocks from the club I had heard them talking about during the accidental phone call, so I took off walking again.
I tried to focus again on my anger about the car, but I was still groggy and confused about the unexpected nap I had taken at Kellie’s. Had Frank drugged me? That seemed unlikely. I didn’t eat or drink anything there. I didn’t even hit the pipe.
Realizing that I didn’t even have a plan for what to do if I found Frank at the club and that my anger had faded to defeat, I turned down a residential block and made my way back to my apartment, where I changed into leggings and got into bed with my laptop.
My inbox was full of responses from clients about getting together the next afternoon. Most were unavailable, but enough said yes that I would be able to catch up on my car payments. I booked a hotel room within walking distance of the apartment, sent out time and location confirmations to my clients, and sent one text to Frank before getting high. “I made it home safe,” was all the text said. I didn’t expect a response, and I didn’t get one.
I was just finishing packing my last suitcase when I noticed my car pulling into the parking lot. I wasn’t expecting Frank to be home so soon; it had been less than 36 hours since I found the note on my mirror. Not only was he back, but he didn’t have a passenger, which was even more shocking.
I had spent the late night and early morning making arrangements to leave Frank. I had business lined up, a friend had offered a temporary place to stay, and I had packed up my essential and sentimental possessions. I had gone over what I would say to Frank a thousand times. I convinced myself I could stand up for myself.
Now that Frank was back, I felt my confidence melt into nothing, and anxiety began to squeeze my lungs like a tightening metal band. I didn’t know if I could go through with it. I wasn’t sure I even had the nerve to speak to him. I stood frozen in place, listening as he let himself in the front door.
First, I heard the keys in the lock, the opening squeak of the hinges, the thud of the door being shut—as usual—with a little too much force, and then the keys landing on the table near the door. Faint clattering of items being shuffled around in the refrigerator, the fridge door shutting, followed by the crack-fizz of carbonated drink being opened. Frank fell into his favorite seat on the couch with a deep sigh, fumbled the TV remote, and then pulled the game controller out of the box under the coffee table. Perfectly normal sounds, as if nothing dysfunctional had happened in the past three days.
After a few minutes, he called me to sit with him. He said he’d missed me and he had a present for me. I felt my courage fading along with the speech I’d been practicing all morning. I quickly stashed the suitcases in the closet and joined Frank in the living room.
He barely glanced at me when I sat down, but he reached into his pocket, pulled out a violet-colored glass pipe, and held it out for me. That was my present. He told me to load it. My hands were shaking, but I managed to load the pipe. It was time for me to speak my piece, but I felt sick, like I hadn’t eaten and my blood sugar was too low. I couldn’t make my mouth form any words. I was suddenly sleepy again. I physically could not keep my eyes open as I handed the loaded pipe back to Frank.
I woke up to Frank telling me that the car was gone. I was confused. Had I been asleep again? What did he mean the car was gone? Was he accusing me of hiding my own car from him? He motioned for me to look out the window. He was right. The car was gone. It couldn’t be gone. I needed it so I could leave Frank. I needed it so I could take my suitcases with me. So I could get to the hotel to meet my clients.
My clients! What time was it? I searched for my phone to check the time. When I found it, I found a string of missed calls and text messages. I had missed my first two clients. They were mad. Among the text messages, was an announcement that my car hadn’t been stolen, don’t call the police.
The car was repossessed. And I was stuck with Frank.
The sleeping episodes continued for the next eight years. Sometimes I would feel them coming on and I could hold them off by getting something to eat or walking around. Avoiding conflict with Frank seemed to be the best prevention. That didn’t make any sense to me, but it seemed to work… somewhat. Sometimes, I knew that I couldn’t avoid a situation that would make me shut down, so I would prepare to fall asleep in that situation.
I never had an explanation for it. It was just something that happened. It stopped happening when I finally left Frank after almost nine years, and I stopped thinking about it.
A few months ago, it started happening again, so I’ve looked into it a little bit.
A good ol’ Google search provides a few somewhat related explanations that seem to be agreed upon by the major studies or researchers:
Nervous system coping mechanism: Add “Fatigue,” “Fog,” ”Flop,” or “Fall Asleep” to the ever-growing list of nervous system responses that include Fight, Flight, Fawn, Flood, Freeze, and Friend. This response allows the brain to shut itself down to protect itself.
Physiological response(s):
Stress, through sustained coping, depletes the brain of essential glucose, which is restored during sleep. When glucose levels drop to a critical level, the brain takes self-preservation measures to restore glucose by shutting down.
Sustained coping often means the sustained release of stress hormones, which support more intense output by the heart, lungs, metabolism, and large muscles. This is physically exhausting, and the longer it is sustained, the more tiring.
Neurochemical production, specifically orexin, which is responsible for waking us up from normal sleep and triggering the release of “fight or flight” mechanisms, is a relatively new discovery and is under active study to determine connections.
Trauma response: Sleep is often the only self-defense mechanism of infants and small children. Adult survivors of childhood trauma, especially those who are extreme people-pleasers or conflict-avoidant, may also suffer from “learned helplessness” and believe that they have no agency in conflict, so they fall back on the only means of protection that has ever worked: sleep.
Memory consolidation: Short-term memory may become overwhelmed with emotionally charged events and can’t properly migrate to long-term memory without sleep as a buffer against continued incoming events. Under extreme stress, the brain has the capacitiy to force the issue.
Any of these theories could apply to my situation. All of them could apply to me. I’ll be playing closer attention to the triggers of my spontaneous nap sessions in the future. Hopefully there won’t be too many in the future.
Do you have the same struggles with stress and sleep? Especially spontaneous sleep? Do you have a partner who physically shuts down during conflict or disagreement? How do you deal with it?
No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap. ~Carrie Snow