Good Grief Guru

Archive for the ‘Insomnia’ Category

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?”  Ernest Hemingway

“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”  Dale Carnegie

“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”  John Steinbeck

“The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won’t get much sleep.”  Woody Allen

“The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.”  W. C. Fields

According to an article on sleep by Dr. Mercola, it suggests that our bodies recharge between 11pm and 1am every night.  Without this, our adrenal glands become strained, and stress is put on our entire system.  I am reaching desperate levels of needing rest.  I want the cure for insomnia, and I want it, I need it, now.

At the beginning of this week I tried to re-set my body.  I used to get sleepy around 10pm, and would drift off peacefully as my head floated onto my pillow.  Then, I started writing.  Writing was therapeutic, but, as Maya Angelou says, “You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have.”  With every post I have proved this is true.  Writing emptied my mind of the thoughts I had, but that only made room for new ideas, material, or thoughts I needed to work out, and work out I did.  I wrestled with my thoughts, I ran them around in my head, I carried them out of my mind and onto lined paper, but still more remained. The more thoughts I had, the less I slept.  The less I slept, the smaller my capacity was to hold them.

Sunday night I fell asleep after 2am, and woke up early for a 9am appointment.

Monday I went to bed close to 3am, only to be woken up by my 8am alarm I had forgotten to turn off from the day before.  I prayed my little miss down the hall didn’t hear it, but as I plopped my weary body on my bed, there was her well rested voice.  “Morning Mom.  Are you ready to go downstairs?”

I was exhausted throughout the day.  By 6:30pm I put my daughter, and myself, to bed.  That was wonderful, for the two hours it lasted!  I was mortified to wake up and see the clock had only moved to 8:30pm.  What am I going to do for the rest of the night?  Full of energy, I wrote, talked to friends, watched a show, until after 2am when I was finally tired enough for bed.

By Wednesday morning, I could barely move.  In fact, I literally kept one eye open to watch my daughter, because the other eyelid was frankly too weak to do the work.  My sister came for a visit (thank goodness for her!) and then a friend invited my daughter for a sleepover.  Great timing!  Yes, yes, and yes.  Have fun.

I got so much writing done, and it was done early.  I cleaned the house, turned off the computer, and read from a good book.  I got all my do-er compulsions out early, and by 11pm I was asleep, until the glorious time of 8:30am!

Like a good daughter, I listened to my mother the night before, went to bed early, didn’t eat after 7:30pm, and downloaded the Sleep Cycle app so I could better understand my sleep patterns.

I’d like to say the next night went just as well, but it seems I did a good job at convincing my body I am now nocturnal, like a cat, a bat, or an owl.  If only I slept 18 hours during the day like a cat, that life would work out just fine.  Since such is not the case, re-setting to the human diurnal standard of being awake, rising with the sun and setting with it too, are highly favourable at this point in time.

Since I don’t like insomnia very much, I’d better find a way to take a good dose of W.C. Field’s cure…sleep.

If you have any suggestions for what has helped you re-set, and fall asleep at a decent hour, please leave me a comment.

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How sweet it is to sleep.  Oh, that my dreams of sleep might awaken to reality, and my reality drift off into sleep.

I’m slightly overjoyed with my floppy brown hat at the moment.  I have trouble sleeping sometimes…okay, a lot of the time.  At home I sleep in a very dark room.  Any light keeps me up.  Some sounds, like the sound of the dishwasher, hums me to sleep, but other sounds, like noises I don’t recognize, noises I want to investigate, or turn off, keep me alert.

The first night in Barbados I heard many sounds.  Crickets, whistle frogs, the sound of the sea.  All natural sounds that would normally pacify me to bed.  Then, I heard a new sound.  An industrial noise like the sound of a generator.  The only thing I could fathom was that someone must be running a generator to work on one of the boats at sea.  It wasn’t until the next groggy morning, my mother said, “It must be coming from a kite.”

“There is no way that sound is coming from a kite, Mom” I argued.  I should have listened to the local.  She walked outside and spotted the kite anchored to a neighbouring house, flying over head, humming powerfully down at me.  I hum-bugged back, “You have got to be kidding me.”

I have now learned there is a special way the Islanders make kites, which produces a noise-maker called a “mad bull.”  After a little research on-line I found I wasn’t the only one desperate for a pair of scissors to cut the mad bull down.

Between the indy race car noise flying over head, the bad karaoke hollering out towards another weekend night, and the spot lights around the beach house that can not be turned off, potential for sleep is not on my side.

But, finally, after two weeks of bull, I’m either going mad myself, or finally growing accustomed to the sound.  Now, I just have to find a solution to the intruding lights.  Then, I remembered my hat.  My thick, dark, floppy brown hat.  I wore it to bed last night, its flaps covering my eyes.  Lights out!  For the first time in weeks I slept like a baby.

As it nears bedtime again, I am beyond happy at the thought of my brown floppy hat, and the dreamy hope that another sound, dark, sleep awaits me.

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The sound of the waves call out from the sea like an amplified heart beat.

I lay on an orange, striped veranda couch and listen.  I feel as though I am resting one ear on a man’s chest, drifting into slumber as the sound of his heartbeat lulls me to sleep.

It seems I was air lifted out of one reality, away from any triggers associated with my husband’s death.  Five hours later I am gently ushered into paradise.  The heat and the shushing of the salty, turquoise waves cause my eyes to grow heavy.  My writing reflects the transition in my thought process, as the ratio between grief articles and happy thought posts, have begun to lean heavily on the lighter side of life.

The sun lifts my spirits and the breeze carries my cares away across the surface of the sea.  It is the first time in months my mind has quieted its thoughts.  I can hold conversations without the compulsion to empty information from my mind in order to make room for more.

Responsibility lags behind me.  Even the threat of insomnia is not so daunting knowing, while I’m away, a house full of women are parenting with me.  Even if I wake up at 6am after falling asleep at only 3, I will awake to the sun, sand, and surf, and a day of little thought or worry.

All bills, chores, and reminders have been left behind at home.

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I feel restless today. Why am I so anxious?

I write, I clean, I organize.  I’ve reached a new plateau.  It took me weeks, actually months, to organize some bills.  I couldn’t see how to process the piles of papers.  For the first time in over a month my accomplishment was more than writing.

I’ve done a lot today.  More than I’ve been able to do in weeks, but I’m unsatisfied.

It must be my connection with God.  I feel it is lacking.  I’m trying to figure things out.  Maybe I haven’t sought God enough.  Maybe that’s the void that I feel.

I pick up my Bible and carry it to bed.  It’s late but I’m not tired…again.  I read, and I learn.  I am satisfied with this, but I am still unsatisfied, with something.

I go back downstairs and collect another book.  Surprised by Hope, by N.T. Wright.  I take a drop of my homeopathic remedy, “Emotional shock.”  When I remember to take it, which is almost every night, I have the most amazing sleeps.  They are deep and all consuming.

I head back to my bed and begin to read.  My eyes grow heavy.  There it is.  The remedy is kicking in.  It shouldn’t be long now before I drift off to sleep.

I close the book and lay my head on my pillow.  I pull the duvet up to my chin.  I think about how the next Happy Thought I should write, will be about the warmth of my covers on a cold winter day.

I lie still, nestled like a chick under its mother’s down.  Only the sound of the heat can be heard pushing through the vents of my house.

I feel it again.  The feeling of being unsatisfied.  Only this time I know what it is.  I lie in bed, all warm and cozy, and alone.

I forgot the homeopathic remedy does not just give me sound sleeps.  It peels back layers to reveal what’s underneath.  Layers I can’t always seem to peel away on my own.

I feel the empty spot in front of me on our bed, and think back to the first few days after you died.  I could almost feel you still there.  I roll over and try to get more comfortable.  Instead I imagine your hand on my hip while my back meets your chest.

This feeling surprises me.  You had moved out before you died.  It’s not like I lost all of you at once.  I had lost you in little pieces over time.  Still, I miss you.  You were my confidant.  You were my friend.  Now I have conversations with the air as though you can hear, or write you letters I know you will never read.

It is a very specific piece of you I tend to miss.  I miss my friend.  I miss my companion.  I miss that you would laugh at my silly football dances when I felt victorious over some silly small thing, or how I could tell you the details about my day.  I miss that even though we fought, I told you everything.  Our conversations were all encompassing, and you loved me for it, even though my honesty came at a cost.

The truth is I’m lonely.  Like old-lady-with-ten-cats kind of lonely.  But I don’t want just anyone.  In fact I know no one else will do.  Like any best friend who has ever moved away, there will only ever be one of you.  When someone else comes and goes, I will be saddened by their void too, because each loss leaves a gap that no one else can fill.  Tonight, I feel the gap of you.

I move my bed to the couch.  The queen sized bed in our room feels too big.  I prefer the bathtub-sized couch that fits my body of one.  I laugh thinking what a hard time I would give you when you slept on the couch by choice.  I think it’s time to downsize, get a roommate, or a cat.

I stay up until 2am, restless and unsettled.  It is going to be a double fist-ed coffee morning.  One cup in each hand.

In the house where I am staying, I hear a man snoring through the wall.  I used to jab you in the side when you would snore, but tonight the sound makes me feel less alone, and finally I drift off to sleep.

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