It’s 3 am and I get out of bed, stretch, and go sit in my living room. I curl up on the couch and assess. I resist the urge of my phone and open a book. The dog joins me, but not so much out of loyalty as out of her crippling fear that she might be left out of a snacking opportunity. Sort of a YOLO but with rabbit livers.
The world is dark and quiet. I am wide awake and clear-headed.
Each year I head back to the U.S. for the month of August. I always look forward to this visit. I spend the month watching the improbably violent residents of Midsomer kill each other off in droves, witnessing the Phillies’ inevitable downturn, and blaming myself for ruining Philadelphia sports with my presence. I spend the month saying things like ‘Man, I gotta get back to a healthy diet’ seconds before shoving roughly 4,000 calories of carbs and meat into my throat. It’s all worth it. Sure, the Phillies won’t win a World Series and it’s my fault, but dammit I love cheesesteaks.
My troubles begin on the return to Europe. Well, I’m leaving my family and it’s the end of the summer, so it’s a little sad to begin with. There’s the impending return to work. But it’s the jetlag that really complicates everything.
My flight was at 7 pm and I landed in London at 6:45 am – aka: for me at that point, 1 am. Somewhere in between those times I was supposed to get a good night’s sleep, which at most could mean 4 hours but which in reality was an hour and some change. The flight crew turned off the lights and since I am regrettably not 3 years old, I didn’t automatically drop off to sleep. I had a 3-hour layover in Heathrow, but instead of reading or eating shortbread I decided to hover above a hallucinogenic exhaustion, hurt my neck by continuously nodding off, and then whimper when I realized I wasn’t in bed at home but rather in Satan’s lower intestine. I do not remember the 2-hour flight back to Prague. I’m told it was lovely. When I did awake at one point, everyone was eating a sandwich.
Getting a cab from the airport was the easiest decision I ever made in my life. The goal became stay awake until a reasonable time – 10ish would be great, 7ish would be acceptable. We went to one of our local pubs and drank beer. Occasionally, I would say: ‘I’m feeling OK, yeah, I’m feeling OK’ while checking my pulse and wiping a layer of cold sweat off my brow. After pizza and a pack of Tastykakes (two boxes lasted all of three days) I hit an unprecedented delirium. I begin giving answers to questions that hadn’t been asked in places where there are no other people (like my toilet). When I come to, I float to my bedroom and fall on my face.
When I awoke up at 3 am later that night, understanding instantly that I was screwed and that 3 am would be my jetlag witching hour. I was wide awake, like a little kid on Christmas morning. I headed into the living room and opened a book.
This was two weeks ago. Since then I have moved through the world in delirium and confusion, I have adopted the dual languages of babble and gobbledygook, I have seen through time while sitting on a bus but lacked the language or motor skills to tell an old man what time it was. I then realized that the old man hadn’t asked me what time it was, nor was he talking to me. I have tremulously met with friends and felt fine, only to hit walls of impenetrable exhaustion so dense and unscalable that I have abruptly paid my check and gone home. My only thought: bed; I need to be in bed.
The unsecret secret is that this has clearly gotten worse with age. As has every other minor ailment and condition. I can, after all, sneeze my back out and flu myself down to a 30 IQ. So jetlag is giving me a glimpse of myself at 93 years old. And it ain’t pretty. I ache everywhere. I’m confused and I’m always covered in food and not on purpose. My teeth feel weird. I can’t remember the last time I showered or if I remembered to clean myself while I was in there.
The hilarious irony is that when I wake up jetlagged at 3 am, it is the most awake I have been since I was eight years old. So I am an unstable doddering sweaty idiot, but I am alert. And it is with this misguided alacrity that I undertake my work at 3 am. The jetlag witching hour. I write at this hour, I read, I make my schedule (but to be honest not a lot of people want to meet at 6 am). And it’s what I have done so far this early morning. If you are going to be jetlagged, you might as well get some work done while you’re suffering.
By 10 am I am useless. Words have stopped making sense in spoken or written form and so my writing ends before it degenerates into Syd Barrett after the LSD. By 11 am I am dozing on the couch. The pets gather round me. One of them pulls a blanket over me. I think it’s the cat, which is weird because she’s not usually that considerate and doesn’t have thumbs. They sing me to sleep and as I drift off I wonder if anyone can tell I haven’t showered.
If I wake up in Heathrow, I’m going to cry.
