The Evolving Word

I wrote a little while back about one of the entertaining aspects of getting older. I acknowledged then, as I do now, that my experience is pretty limited and I do not pretend to be suffering to the extent I may when I am in my 40s, 50s or 60s. The last post on this subject delved into my inability to properly digest food. The other, and perhaps complementary, problem is insomnia.

Unsure if it is directly related to age, stress, diet or a combination of the above, I can't claim to know the roots of insomnia. Instead, I want to focus on the specific frustrations inherent in not knowing the sweet breath of sleep on your neck. Sleep deprivation is a common field of study, and while there are clearly reasons why sleep evades a person for a long period of time (I'm thinking of soldiers on a battlefield, college students around finals, and those times when you find yourself running from a ravenous pack of wolves because you inadvertantly crossed the property line of an mad scientist intent on discovering the source of recent leprosy breakouts in the backwaters of Louisiana), simply laying awake at night, struggling to find sleep, is obviously the primary culprit of sleep deprivation.

You are taught from very young that sleep is a natural component of the day-night cycle. Even when they claim not to be tired, children generally fall into a peaceful slumber without much fanfare (excepting, of course, when that occasional bane of childhood, fear, intrudes). I can recall never having a single night of trouble sleeping through the first 28 years of my life. That doesn't mean that I always got my required eight hours of sleep. Quite to the contrary, there were many times that my sleeping was very erratic. Inevitably, though, I managed to balance out my sleep schedule so that I was never too tired. And if you know the hours I put in at my two jobs during my last year of college, you are probably as bewildered by this fact as I am.

It almost seems too easy to connect my increase in insomnia to my wife's illness. As she courageously battled through cancer over the last year, I began to court insomnia like it was an insatiable mistress, begging for my attention regardless of my desires. Whereas I had previously experienced insomnia a couple of times, suddenly I would struggle through it three times in a week. Even more inexplicably to me, I would have it two nights in a row. My eyes felt as if eyelids were the only comfort left in this world. I felt tired, but I couldn't sleep. Sometimes I would try to convince myself that I was sleeping intermittently, and maybe this was the case, but I would always catch the clock swinging through each half-hour up until 2 or 3 in the morning. This was after beginning sleep around 10pm.

Your mind plays all kinds of interesting games when you lay awake through the hours of the night. Techniques that worked in the past, such as counting backwards from 10,000, are no longer effective. Songs are suddenly your worst enemy. Everything becomes "It's a Small World" after laying awake for two hours. Problems, memories and ideas that used to faithfully drift you off no longer stay focused. The baseball game eventually becomes the next door neighbor which becomes your first fist-fight which becomes the success or failure of your favorite sports team which becomes....you get the idea.

I think I have this thing figured out, though. If I lay in bed and I can feel my heart beating -- it is a bad sign. If I feel any sense of anxiety -- bad sign. If I am excited at all -- bad sign. My heart rate seems to be directly related to my success as a sleeper. Relaxation techniques (I remember my mom making waves on my waterbed to calm me down) don't always seem to work. I convince myself that I can control the rate of my heart by sheer willpower, and I know I can, but something always seems to break my concentration. So I rely on the most consistent form of relaxation for me -- drinking water.

The process of drinking water is what is important. Water itself, while hydrating and healthy, doesn't seem to be the hail mary that I sometimes need. Ingesting water, though, and feeling it pass through my esophogas does the trick every time. The bouts of insomina I have had lately have all come at times when I had no drinkable water (tap water doesn't count -- I would rather drink uring). I am sure that there are a million explanations for this, as I am sure that everyone has their technique which always works, but all I really care about is when I finish writing this and it is time to go to sleep, I can drink my water and know that peaceful rest isn't very far away.

I am ending this abruptly (or, as some of you might feel, way too long after all interest died off) because I need to sleep and you, with your incessant gaze and accusatory demeanor, will keep my up all night trying to explain away these issues. I have my solution, at least until I am old enough to find other reasons to involuntarily stay awake, and I would like to keep it that way.

Sweet dreams -- I know that I am going to try to have them......


Create an account	Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one -- Albert Einstein