The Thin Veneer of Sleep

I miss this show

Yeah, I know I write about sleep a lot, but it comes up a lot in life, ya know?

Sometimes, I fall asleep like I'm dying and then sleep like the dead. My husband will chuckle when he wakes me up to brush my teeth if I've nodded off before grooming or the next morning when we get up for work. He'll say something like, "You just fell right asleep in the middle of watching *insert favorite YouTube channel or Netflix series here*!" and I'll say, "That's a good thing!" I envy people who do that all the time because falling sound asleep near bed time almost always means I will sleep mostly if not all the way through the night. If I toss and turn or I'm anxious at bed time, it could be bumpy ride.

You see, I'm not one of those people who just has trouble falling asleep, though I often do. Oh, no. I also have trouble staying asleep and falling back to sleep. It's like a good night's sleep is a warm down comforter that is heavy enough to make you feel like your body is being hugged by a kind yeti that will protect you diligently until morning. A bad night's sleep is a light sheet in mid-December with a breeze coming in from the window that could blow it off at any minute.

Let's take last night for example. I went upstairs pretty damn ready to sleep. I'd panicked for much of the day and was worn out. I watched a movie with my hubby. Then, I decided to roll over and close my eyes. That is when my perfectly calm brain did the weirdest thing. It started racing, but it was like I had the thought process of a five-year-old sitting in the backseat. Half-sentences, random images of innocuous things, snippets of song, etc. all popped in and out of my brain. I couldn't get comfortable or get my internal dialogue to stop for long enough to drift off.

When I finally did fall asleep, it was only the fragile porcelain mask of sleep. It shattered within minutes. I woke up, struggled for about half an hour, decided to take a sedative, and drifted back off for about an hour. That's about as much success I get from my mild anxiety medication. The next time I woke up, I struggled a bit more, thinking that sedative was in the background there. It would have to help me at some point, but no. I had to take the sleeping medication that I rarely touch to fall back asleep again. This time, I got a whopping four hours. By then, my husband was getting up for work. I figured I might as well too, since I didn't want to go through trying to fall asleep again.

F*ck you, sleep.

. . .

Wait, I'm just mad. I really love you. Please come back. Let's pretend I'm sixteen again and sleep from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. Please?