Let you be you

At the end of my third year at college. I attempted my first all nighter. I don't remember what course the exam was for. I don't know why I thought I needed those hours of cramming. Most likely, it was another college experience I wanted to check off.

I staked out a space in my dorm's study room. Went off campus to Luigi's for a sandwich and then to Dunkin donuts for two large coffees. I ate the sandwich, drank the two cups of coffee. My next memory was of having fallen almost immediately to sleep and waking up to the dawn chirping of birds outside the window that May morning.

As a teenager, then, and now, I've needed 9 to 10 hours sleep. Not that I haven't tried to resist. The year after I graduated from college, I decided this was nonsense, and I set about training myself to get by on less sleep. At some point, I had worked my way down to 4 ½ hours sleep. I imagined being awarded a trophy -- a bronze candle burning at both ends.

Then I got sick. Maybe it was a flu. If it was a flu, it was the worst of my life before or since. I became delirious with fever and was severely nauseous. What's more, it was winter, and while I was down, the oil tank for our apartment furnace ran out, the oil company wouldn't come without prepayment, and my roommate was broke. I was deliriously hot and cold. I was afraid I was going to die. Then I was afraid I wouldn't die.

At one point, I came to: weak, dehydrated, hungry, but okay. My body had given me a stern warning. It wanted its full measure of sleep.

About 15 years later, I was still frustrated with losing -- as I perceived it -- more than 40 percent of my day to sleep. This time I appealed to science and medicine. I asked one of my psychiatrists how I could get by on less sleep. He said, "be born to different parents.'

It turns out, I needed a smart-ass psychiatrist.

I still sleep like a teenager, who on average sleep for 9 to 10 hours. Last night I had nine hours of sleep. Monday it was ten. One of the compensations is those sleep hours don't have to come at a specific time period, nor all at once. I can nap at will and wake up refreshed after 10 minutes, two hours, four hours. I can change time zones across the planet and fall into the local pattern.

My body is nonetheless carefully monitoring for those 9 hours minimum.

I've stopped treating a condition as a disability. It's definitely a difference. That doesn't make it a problem. When I'm awake, I have energy and stamina as much as anyone. It may be part of what has made me so focused on productivity. I have less time to waste.

I looked up the etymology of the word, condition. It comes from the Latin: agreement.

My condition and I have come to an agreement.