O Sleep, Wherefore Art Thou?

It’s a little after 6 in the morning, and I’m wide awake writing this. Why? Because I can’t sleep. Again. I’ve been up all night, and I couldn’t even sneak in a couple of hours this morning. I tried going to bed around 4, but only lay awake with my eyes open, staring stupidly at the ceiling. My thoughts are racing; there’s too much going on in my head all at once and I can’t seem to shut it off. Just another day in paradise, right?

Now, I’ve finally recognized this for what it is: a manic sleeping pattern. It’s been quite a while since I’ve experienced it, so it took me awhile to figure it out. I don’t know why, because I’m certainly not manic. The meds are still working, so why the hell I can’t sleep some nights is a mystery. On other nights, I’m ready to go to sleep by midnight or 1 AM and I’m in bed till 9 or 10. The night before last, I went to bed at 2:30 and didn’t get up until noon. Then I have a night like this one, when I was so wired that I literally could not close my eyes. And I’m not the least bit tired.

I’ve been told I should shut down the electronics and bore myself to sleep. It’s just that it’s light so late in the evening that I don’t wind down until long after the sun sets, regardless of whether I cut myself off or not. As I’ve said before, my circadian rhythm is different from most people’s; left to my own devices, I usually go to bed around 2 and wake up at 10. But this sleeplessness happening several times a week is new. I can usually squeeze out a few hours between 4 and 8, but there have been a couple of occasions recently when I didn’t sleep at all. In fact, there was one 72-hour stretch about a week ago when I got about 10 hours’ sleep altogether. I followed that with 10 hours in one night. I literally fell asleep on the couch and gave myself a nice crick in my neck in the bargain.

So last night I had the TV on low, on a station where this preacher comes on at 4 AM and goes until 6. He usually bores me silly and I fall asleep to the sound of his droning, but this time he was putting forth some ideas that I, with my Catholic sensitivities, thought were rather dangerous. It made me think, though, and that was it for the night; I gave up at 5:45 and got up to make myself some coffee. Shelley joined me about 45 minutes later. We’ve got a picnic to go to this afternoon, so there won’t be much of a chance to sneak in a nap, as if I could do so after meeting a bunch of new people. That tends to overstimulate me, but I’m actually looking forward to it. I want to go places and do all the things.

Ah, well. I have the feeling that I’ll make up for lost sleep in the winter. I’m such a slug in the cold months. That’s why I love summer so much—I feel alive! The roses in our yard are in full bloom and so colorful that they almost hurt the eyes; it’s so good to feel the sun on my face and the breeze in my hair; even the air smells wonderful! Today is bright and the skies are blue, and I don’t mind being awake so early as long as I get to drink coffee and look out upon the vividly green trees while listening to classic country music.

Speaking of which: do you know what happens when you play a country song backwards? You get out of jail, you get your wife back, you get your truck back…