F#%@ing Insomnia

Can anyone relate to this?

It’s just past one a.m. on a Monday night and you’re finally sleepy enough to put down the compelling novel you’ve been reading and turn off the bedside lamp. Time to visit dreamy places. Smoosh your face into the pillow just so. Close your eyes. Ahh…

But no! You’re suddenly aware of being awkwardly sandwiched between The Life Partner and The Dog. (In theory, you could push an 8-pound dog off the bed, but in reality, you’re the pushover.) The Life Partner is snoring like a Havana Chevy and The Dog’s breath stinks. The Life Partner is 18 feet tall and sleeps on his side, taking up two-thirds of the bed and poking his bony knees into your back. The Dog kisses your face, and you just know she’s been eating “cat cookies” again.

In desperation, you get up from your warm comfy bed and relocate to the much less inviting rock-like couch in the office. Try some deep-breathing relaxation techniques. These merely bore and frustrate you. But although you’re not sleepy enough to sleep, you don’t have the energy to actually do anything.

The computers hum and their various lights glow, reminding you that you could get off your ass and write. Maybe continue transcribing the journal you kept on a trip to Cuba ten years ago. But that’s not very appealing at all – the whole process to date has been like pulling your own teeth. Without anesthetic. When you read certain stuff you’ve written in the past, it’s so fucking banal you could just slap yourself senseless. Which would arguably be one way to bring on sleep.

So you get off the couch and blog about insomnia. And it’s two a.m. now. You recall The Life Partner saying to you recently “I can tell when you’ve taken a sleeping pill – you always snore.” D’accord, he nudges you when this happens, thereby waking you up, and you feel, shall we say, pretty strongly about being awake when you want to be asleep.

The blogging, like the deep breathing, eventually starts to bore and frustrate you, because it isn’t sleep. Finally, you decide to take a pill and go back to your warm comfy bed. You may not be 18 feet tall, but you’ve got knees of your very own. :^)