Word After Word

The other day I heard a man complaining about his wife, her terrible habits. His burden was being married to her. As I listened to him go on and on about how bad he had it, I realized she actually sounded perfectly fine, a very nice person, who had to put up with a rather challenging husband. Who knows. The point is no one wants to listen to this talk. I think of my friend Jose, who adores his wife Sherri, and it’s so much fun to be around him. Jose is the kind of man who bursts into song when talking about his wife or his life.

Which got me thinking about the bane of my existence, my annoying, difficult, endless bad spouse: Insomnia. About whom I complain ceaselessly. This must come to a stop.

I can’t remember when it started, this inability to sleep at night. I think it began after my car accident, a devastating thing that happened in 1994: unconsciousness, surgeries, guilt, and swelling. But I am not sure exactly when the terrible not sleeping curse began. Maybe earlier? I know when I was young, I used to fling myself into my messy bed and sleep like a child, exhausted, bewildered, deleted. I do not know exactly when that abandoned easy sleeping stopped and the horrible wakeful nights began. But at some point, I became a person who lost the talent for sleeping. Was it the near death experience? a profound desire to stay awake, sleep being to close a sister to death?

It bothers me that I do not know when the insomnia got started. And that is part of the whole problem: I wasn’t paying attention. To my life, to the road. To my body, to God. To the moment. I wasn’t paying attention to my sleeping. I wasn’t paying attention to my waking, either.

A car crash is many things and one of them in punctuation.

So I am now in a bad marriage with my (not)sleeping, with my nights.  I am so sick of hearing myself complain about my little insomnia husband to my friends. It’s all I talk about! I want pity and understanding. I want to sleep. I want to feel rested and quick, focused, less like I am walking through the day as though walking underwater.

So this week, I decided to take me and my insomnia to marriage counseling, metaphorically. I have instituted a series of New Approaches. I am going to fall in love with my insomnia. I am going to cherish it, for better or worse, in sickness and in health. Call me Mrs.Insomnia.  : )

Our vows.

1. A moratorium on whining about wakefulness. I want to be like Jose and sing about my nights. I want to love my nights, even if they are difficult, what isn’t difficult?

2.  Melatonin. Why not try? (Since the car accident, I have feared anything that would make me sleepy aka depressed because of the aftermath, emotionally, from that event. But I am not in a car accident right now. I am strong and healthy. I can try this melatonin. Which is like sleeping while being pulled by a tug boat through a choppy bay. Not restful. But the pulling is nice. At least I’m lying down.

3. Enjoying being awake. Instead of berating myself for being wrong wrong wrong and freaking out about how bad I will feel all day tomorrow, I am steering towards a good book. How nice to have time read. No thinking about tomorrow afternoon, and how un-witty I will be. So many books needing reading. Some part of me doesn’t want to sleep. I will try to enjoy these dark weird hours.

This is how I am loving my marriage to insomnia. I am with him. When he is there, I am with him.