The land of the sleepless
January 17, 2007 by piereth
It’s not that R keeps me awake, but that I can’t stay asleep.
Over the last few nights my dreams have consisted of decapitations, car crashes, broken necks and serial killers. Once I’ve woken up from these, I can’t sleep again. I lie there, thinking over my day, not scared exactly but dryly resigned to the fact that there’s no more sleep for me. It could be any time between 3am and 4am, and happens like clockwork.
Dark time is funny time, I’ve found. It goes slow for a while, then quick. You almost drop off, then realise and the realisation jerks you awake. You have periods of lucid dreaming which make perfect sense in the dream but are ludicrous once you wake up fully - this morning I was trying to get a money off voucher for a bus pass in an unnamed Eastern European country where I didn’t speak the language and didn’t know where I was headed to - you get my point.
I’ve tried wearing ear plugs in bed but I take them out in my sleep. It’s almost as if I’m intentionally sabotaging all my best attempts to sleep soundly.
Sleep is political dynamite and a relationship - buster. The amount of hatred - cold, black, boiling hatred - you can build up for someone who is blamelessly snoozing away on your right hand side is astounding.
Oh honey, poor you. Do you have a routine for winding down and going to bed, I’ve heard that can help get off to sleep - though of course your problem is not getting to sleep, so much as getting back to sleep once you’ve woken up. How dark is your bedroom? Some people have to have fully-lined black-out type curtains in order to stay asleep I think. The thing I find helps me most when I wake up in the wee hours, is to have a pad and pencil by the bed to write down all the random cobblers which is bumbling round my brain. Makes no sense in the morning, of course, but it seems to clear out whatever was subconsciously making me anxious.
I think I need to do more exercise!!