Sleep

Or rather lack thereof...

I am writing this post having gotten to sleep around 10pm and then awoken at 12:30am. And nothing I did got me back to sleep. I drank my sleepy/calming tea that is supposed to help you get back to dreamland. I lay there slowly trying to relax my body and thinking sweet natural thoughts. Nada. Nothing. Black emptiness of being wide awake and my brain not being able to turn anything off.

And for the record I have tried melatonin. In fact just last week. I got 2 hours of sleep from that, which left me groggy and feeling hungover. Was not my best day at work to say the least. I also used to take an OTC sleeping med, but that would also leave me groggy and tired the next day as well. In fact, I went to the doctor because at one point, I was left so tired my eyes hurt- have you ever been that tired but were not the parent of a newborn or going through a medical procedure? And he basically told me to stop taking the OTC pills, and I did. Yes tired eye hurt also stopped.

Now, I do not have insomnia per se. Most nights I do get a decent amount of sleep. Not the 8 hours recommended by the sleep doctors, but well enough to leave me peppy for the next day. Though not necessarily peppy enough to tackle laundry, or more than a 20 minute ride on the peloton, after a day of working and running errands.

I have to tell you that sleep has been the bane of my existence since I hit 40. Some say it is this perimenopause thingie. Ok, fine. Kerfuffled hormones will cause all kinds of disruptions in your day to day life, but I am not sure that is the only reason I can’t sleep. It’s been decades now, and it is not getting any better.

On the other hand, I do have an admission. Sleep gets better when I forgo that nightly glass of wine. So yeah, it could be the wine. But so much so that it turns me into a zombied night owl? At first the powers that be said don’t drink wine close to bed. So I have wine as I prepare dinner around 6 or 7 pm. That leaves hours before bed. But nope, that doesn’t work.

And yes, I know I am not supposed to drink wine because of the reflux, but it is under control and still wine, not bubbly wine, can be drunk occasionally.

And no I don’t drink caffeine other than a cup or 2 of coffee in the morning. Well, another admission. I have gotten into the habit of noshing on dark chocolate covered almonds in the afternoon. But is there enough caffeine in that chocolate to wake me up in the middle of the night? I am not so sure about that. I can attest to everyone that I am not eating a pound of chocolate every day. Maybe 5 almonds at the most (It is chocolate with nuts and they are fattening after all. Listen, I am in a constant conundrum with my tuchas. You see I want to be able to eat yummy stuff like chocolate as much as I want without suffering any consequences, but my tuchas thinks otherwise. So it is a push-me-pull-you sort of love affair between my ass and my snacks. )

Meanwhile, this sleep thing is going to make me grumpy and interfere with my calm. Yes, my doctor told me to go for a sleep study last year during my annual visit, but I dont have the patience. As you age everything in life is just more tests, more studies, and another doctor. Every doctor has a specialty. (I am simply waiting for the day the doctors specialize in the right and left elbows, separately.)

Now don’t get me wrong. When I was fighting cancer, thank God for doctors who knew what they were doing. But once you are done with that (Ok in the back of your mind you really are never done when you have had cancer - another long story for another day), the idea of more and more doctors just becomes annoying.

Another admission, I now have a list of doctors longer than the list of blood relatives withwhom I engage.

But seriously, there has to come a point as we age that things do settle down. There has to be ways to right the sleep ship so to speak.

I know I need more sleep. I know when I am finished with my work day and errands today, when I sit down to watch one of the shows I stream, I am going to fall asleep. Which, of course, will add a new and interesting layer to the sleep-no sleep chapter of my life. They say never try to catch up on missed sleep by napping during the day. That will only add to sleeplessness at night.

In the meantime, interestingly enough, I was reading about something called 2nd sleep which was the norm in the middle ages, and probably the norm long before then, just nobody thought to record it as it was not something out of the ordinary. Humans would go to sleep when the sun went down and then wake in the middle of the night, naturally. They would handle some business, or needed chores, maybe even attend a mass (once the Church decreed middle of the night prayer times), but then they would go back to sleep until dawn.

Maybe what I am doing is channeling my long dead ancestors who had to wake to stoke the fire and make sure that all was right at home. (They didn’t exactly have burglar alarm systems back in the feudal times) Unfortunately, it seems though I am not able to imbue myself with the 2nd sleep phase of the nighttime. Well, that’s not totally honest, sometimes I do fall back into dreamland around 4 or 5 am and am golden until 7. Still not enough to make me pleasant to be around though.

Oh I will get surly, lose patience, and be aggravating to be around, no doubt about it.

Probably by 4 or 5pm. Just a warning. If you see a curly haired matron yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off her lawn, that would probably be me.

I have decided to call this stage of my life the “no-sleep-ogre years,” instead of my “golden years.”

Note: I have not activated paid subscriptions. I do see other authors use a tip jar or ask to buy them a coffee. I am not going to do that. If you feel that I have reached you in some way, please give to your local food bank.

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