my frenemy, insomnia

     Crossing the line into 4:00 am and not an instant of sleep yet.  Insomnia, my lifelong frenemy.  I’m so tired after a busier evening than usual.  But my mind is spinning like a mad mouse on a wheel, regardless of the Lunesta.

     As a child, I would listen for my mother coming down the hall to check on me at nap time, to make sure I was asleep.  I faked it pretty well most of the time.  Then as soon as her departing footsteps faded, I popped up.  I loved being awake through nap time, because as long as I managed to be quiet, I could play or read.  I was free!  Having not only me to deal with, but my two younger brothers, my poor mother needed quiet time!  Clearly, naps were more for her than us.

     I’ve never skipped a chance to read, then or since.  It’s my longest and deepest addiction.  It settles my ADHD so that I can be relatively still.  (I truly loved the hyperfocusing that comes with high energy ADHD, and still miss it so much, it makes my teeth ache.)

     Till I hit 30, and got mono and Lyme in the same year, culminating in severe chronic fatigue, I could miss a night’s sleep and be brighter and sharper in the morning (and all day) than the sensible normal people who had had their straight eight.

     Who needed sleep?  Not me.  I hated it, it was boring, annoying, a waste of time.  I had energy to burn, till then. Put the Energizer bunny to shame.  Went to sleep later and got up earlier than most folks under seventy. Many nights, I stayed up to read, I painted entire paintings, filled sketchbooks, did homework, papers, most of my sporadic housecleaning, wrote poems, or incredibly long, detailed letters to friends far away.  Listened to music (all these years later, I still play rock music at a lower volume than anyone I know, because I got used to it playing it quietly in my room at night.)

     I often got more done at night than during the day, because dealing with people and course material took so much attention.

     In college, if I had been up all night, I liked to go down to the dock on Lake Virginia and watch the sun come up.  It was especially pretty as light first began to peep, pinky orange, through the wads and snarls of Spanish moss in the trees, and you could hear the peacocks’ eerie calls echo across the water.  Eventually, the Beanery would open for breakfast, and a new day began.

     When the  CFS began, even though the exhaustion was indescribably deep and overwhelming, I could not sleep, because I ached in my marrow and joints.  A brutal indifferent giant ground my bones. It was worse at night, and because I was too tired to rest, I stayed burned out and edgy.  No amount of sleep was enough to make me feel better.  Progress has been little, and measured over decades, not days or weeks.

     Staying up all night was only fun when I got away with it — when I felt as good on little or no sleep as people did who had had a good night’s sleep.

     Now it is often oh so difficult to get to sleep, but even if I manage that trick, staying asleep is hard.

     Or rather, since I live on a farm, the problem now is getting back to sleep after getting up to see why the Maremmas were both barking at something outside the fence (it is serious when the mastiff indoors joins in), or Skye needs to go out and can’t wait.  She’s like me, she can never wait!  So I have to get up quick to get her out in time, then wait at the door to let her in, because when she is awake and herself, she doesn’t bark.  (I did just buy some brass bells for the door handles, so she can learn to tell us when she wants to get in or out.)

     Several times a night my poor epileptic Frenchie has another REM sleep episode, where she wakes up barking, snarling, or yapping as if she was cornered by a fearsome enemy.  Her epilepsy medications are beginning to help.  (Snapping at flies that aren’t there doesn’t bother us much, except that it is a form of seizure, and best prevented.)

     Skye had over a dozen REM episodes a night at first, a couple dozen on her worst nights, and is down to several a night now, and they are less severe.  But all too often, they still wake me.  She falls right back to sleep.  On nights when I can’t sleep at all, I count her episodes, which is why I am sure how many she had ramped up to, and how few they are now.

My good example!

   Throughout a night like this, poor Jubal (my elderly mastiff, who is extraordinarily talented at sleeping) has to get up and check on me periodically.  He sighs and plods over, sniffs at me, then shuffles away to circle and thud down, with something as much groan as sigh.

     He worries so, and wishes I could follow his excellent example.  So do I!