The Shapeless Unease: an insomniac’s account of elusive sleep

The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping

Author: Samantha Harvey

ISBN-13: 978-1787332027

Publisher: Jonathan Cape

Guideline Price: £12.99

“Death, so call’d, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is pass’d in sleep”, writes Lord Byron in his epic poem Don Juan.

The tradition of using sleep and death as conjugated concepts in literature dates back to ancient Greek mythology which regards Hypnos, the god of sleep, to be the brother of Thanatos, a nature god that personifies death. The Shapeless Unease is a memoir of an insomniac woman who becomes preoccupied with our mortal condition and with death.

I can vouch for the fact that the inability to sleep is one of the most infuriating experiences a person can go through

Sleep is one of those elusive forces that cannot be bent to our wills but is essential for a person’s survival and sanity as it provides a safe haven from consciousness and, subsequently, from everyday stressors. It has been scientifically linked to formation of memories and healthy processing of negative emotions. So when this critical mechanism falters, it manifests itself in the form of confounding anxiety. It is no surprise then how nerve-racking it is for insomniacs to be exiled from the sweet oblivion that sleep offers.

With my history of sleep problems, I can vouch for the fact that the inability to sleep is one of the most infuriating experiences a person can go through. Harvey’s helplessness resonated with me as I read the book over the course of two nights of insomnolence while trying to eke out every second of sleep I could.

The Shapeless Unease chronicles the writer’s year of sleeplessness in a stream-of-consciousness memoir. What caused it? She identifies a number of triggers: moving into a noisy neighbourhood, her apprehension over Brexit and most recently the death of her cousin whose body was discovered after two days. Anyone who has found themselves endlessly awake in the wee hours of the morning, desperate at the hands of sleep, would relate to her depiction of “nights awake are the longest, largest, most cavernous of things. There is acre upon acre of night, and whole eras come and go, and there isn’t any other soul to be found on the journey through to morning.”

Existential ruminations

Her cousin’s death leads her into lengthy existential ruminations about mortality. Her uncle told her he had texted the cousin a joke the day he died and Harvey wonders if there is anything sadder than an unread joke on a dead person’s phone.

Harvey, while consulting her doctor, is acutely aware of her privilege and mocks herself by wondering why people in Syria can sleep with bombs falling

The mind of an insomniac is preoccupied with an intense craving for sleep and when that is not fulfilled, it causes a lot of pent-up fury– towards the merciless culprit that is sleep, the world and themselves.

Harvey’s fury is directed at her ostensibly benign condition, something she might have internalised from her doctors who get impatient with her and find engaging with her a waste of their time and resources. When Harvey suggests conducting a blood test to make sure her insomnia was not a symptom of thyroid issues, she is met with a disdainful remark that “this is not a shop”.

Harvey, while consulting her doctor, is acutely aware of her privilege and mocks herself by wondering why people in Syria can sleep with bombs falling but she cannot sleep on her king-size mattress. Unfortunately this sense of shame over psychological ailments is emblematic of a larger problem: the social prism that views psychological issues as a sign of luxury or idleness.

Harvey tries every rule in the book to cure her insomnia – a gamut of medications and therapies from cognitive behavioural therapy to acupuncture, while warding off inane suggestions such as spraying lavender on her pillow. Sleep continues to evade her.

Sleep problems are the hallmark of our age of anxiety, exacerbated by the constant bombardment of information through social media. Harvey investigates the link between her inability to rest and anxiety. Anxiety is differentiated from fear since the latter requires a tangible source of threat while anxiety is free-floating and operates “in a hall of mirrors, self-perpetuates”.

Sleeplessness is the pandemic of our generation and this book offers no universal solution

How to protect yourself from a peril that does not exist? By standing a more vigilant guard in the form of wakefulness. Harvey is asked by her hypnotherapist to trace the root of her anxiety but insomnia is what causes her anxiety and so goes the vicious circle.

Unprocessed trauma

Anxiety, a vagabond force, often attaches itself to events and objects to justify its presence. Harvey recognises this self-referencing characteristic of anxiety and throughout her book recounts events from her childhood and recent past – of a dead dog and of being assaulted in Australia during her 20s – unprocessed trauma lurking in her subconscious until now that might account for her anxiety and her insomnia.

Sleeplessness is the pandemic of our generation and this book offers no universal solution. What it does offer, however, is the light at the end of a seemingly never-ending tunnel. Eventually Harvey finds not a cure but some respite in outdoor swimming and writing, the latter described as her way of shepherding the chaos of her mind. This memoir is a stimulating and hopeful book that gives us an intimate glimpse of a writer persevering through a challenging part of her life.