Often when people talk about the Id, Ego, and Superego, the Id kind of gets the short end of the stick. Poor Id tends to be described in negative terms. He is portrayed as an instinctive, dark, aggressive side of us that needs to be controlled by the superego. We tend to think we would be better off without him.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m pretty sure my Id is a stone-cold badass.

I mean, sure, his “fight or flight” mechanism seems permanently switched to “fight” but is that such a bad thing when it’s so rarely triggered?

You’re probably wondering why I’m bringing this up today. Lucky for you, I’m about to tell you. But if you’re super squeamish, you might want to skip this one.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

First, it’s important to understand that I haven’t been sleeping well this week. This happens periodically, and I could blame it on work stresses or neurosis, but I think the truth is that my body just occasionally decides it doesn’t need any of this “sleep” business.

Last night, I went straight to sleep for the first time in a while.  Almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, in fact. It was beautiful.

There I was, blissfully asleep, and then I was slightly awake, feeling like my Shirt was itchy.

Then I was asleep again.  Then I was a little more awake, again feeling like my shirt was weirdly itchy.

Then my Id came roaring to life and slapped the crap out of an inch-long roach that had been crawling around inside my shirt.

If you just freaked out a little bit, congratulations.  Multiply that by about 1000 and you will understand exactly how horrified I was.

What came next can be best explained as a conversation between Id and Ego.

EGO: “Wait what just happened?”

ID: “Nothing, go back to sleep.”

“Was that what I think it was?”

“What do you think it was?”

“Holy shit, there was a bug on me.”

“It’s fine. I killed it.”

“OMFG, WAS IT A SPIDER?!”

“Nah, dude.  It was just a roach.”

“KILL IT WITH FIRE!”

“Too late.”

“I WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN.”

“It’s really not that big of a—“

“I CAN STILL FEEL THE GUTS ON ME.”

“Well, I mean, that’s going to happen…”

“I THINK I’M GOING TO BE SICK.”

“…Are you seriously going to make us lose half a night’s sleep over this?”

That was around 3:30am.  Since then I’ve taken three hot showers and fled the house for a coffee shop because I was too freaked out and still feeling its little feet crawling up and down my back.  My Id is still screaming for sleep, but that’s probably not gonna happen.

All I can say is thank god for Superego.  Because Ego kinda wants to nuke the house and Id would have a great time watching it burn.

You know, as long as he gets to sleep afterwards.