How I Tried to Stop Snoring

I wanted a quick fix, even if it meant strapping a glorified bike pump to my face

- Jordan Foisy

I think of myself as a good sleeper. Give me a large book and a horizontal position, and I could fall asleep strapped to the top of a bullet train. Sleep has been a constant ally, a friend. When I was a teen, it was a refuge. I used to pray for sleep; its temporary oblivion was a welcome respite from anxiety and obsessive thoughts. It was a pause—not a death, but close enough to it. Every time I fell asleep, there was a chance of resurrection, to wake up new.

My girlfriend, Allison, however, does not think I’m a good sleeper. She knows the truth. At night, I thrash around and scream. Occasionally, it sounds like my breathing stops. Worst of all for her, I snore. Badly. She’s shown me a video of it, and it’s horrifying: My thin, wheezing inhalations are interrupted by a wrenching tear of a noise, like someone ripping a carpet inside a cave.

We sometimes get into little fights when I wake up. She’s had a terrible sleep and is justifiably annoyed. She can’t stay mad for long, though, because who is she mad at? Certainly it was my body, not me, that was snoring; my lungs moving the air, my soft tissues. Those are the guilty parties. When Allison is flipping my sleeping body over and plugging its nose, or occasionally smothering my face with a pillow, who is she smothering? How unimportant is the self to our life when we are sleeping—something we spend a third of our life doing—that it can be completely absent?