Are you a good sleeper? Don’t take this personally, but if you are, I hate you.
I haven’t slept through the night in years, which I’m told is normal for a woman “of a certain age.”
But since my husband died last September, I have turned not sleeping into a bona fide art form. I am a seasoned professional – a world freaking champion – at not sleeping.
I recently started thinking about not sleeping – and how good I’ve been at not sleeping for a very long time – when a post I’d written in 2017 appeared on my Facebook feed, as a “memory.”
Questions you ask yourself while lying awake at 4 AM:
Which cat is that on my feet?
Was that the AC or the heat that just clicked on?
Did Jeff ever seal that grout?
Are the birds all sleeping or just having quiet time?
What is the exact etymology of the word “convert”?
What does my skeleton look like?
These whimsical musings made me smile. Little did I know those were the halcyon days. Now, I lie awake wondering how I will take care of myself in my decrepitude. Where will the money come from? Who will change all the flat tires and fix all the leaks? If I take a bizarre fall in the hallway – like the one that killed my husband – how many days will it be before somebody notices I’m not posting on Facebook? Will my cats have eaten me by then?
(Please, dear reader, don’t email me about getting an Apple watch or a special necklace. I’m looking into all the things. These columns I write are not “cries for help,” just opportunities to vent . . . and maybe even laugh a little. I find gallows humor comforting.)
If you’re a bad sleeper, like me, you might agree that the problem isn’t falling asleep, but staying asleep. All I have to do to fall asleep is get in bed early to read the book I’m trying to finish for book club – whatever it may be – knowing our meeting is two days away and I’m only halfway through. No matter how much I love the book, or how early I get in bed with it, as long as there’s a looming deadline, rest assured I’ll nod off in fifteen minutes.
Not to worry, though. I get my best reading done later on, in the wee hours, after I wake up to… well, you know. (It just occurred to me that maybe that’s why they’re called the “wee” hours?) As I said above, there’s very little “sleeping through the night” after a certain age. But, apparently, it is possible to go right back to sleep after a late-night bathroom break.
Or so I’ve been told.
The trick, they say, is to stay away from screens. Especially your phone. Once you start scrolling on that addictive little monster, it’s all over.
But I have never had the ability to just shut my eyes and sleep. Jeff had that skill – in abundance – and it was maddening to his sleep-challenged wife. He’d say “goodnight,” his head would hit the pillow, and a minute later, he’d be snoring. To be fair, in recent years he’d lost some weight and, with it, the snoring. It seems only right that I give him his props, even posthumously.
But I digress. If it’s 2 AM and I’m lying in bed awake, no matter how hard I resist, I ultimately succumb to a screen. I try to make it my Kindle instead of my phone – hoping to repeat the earlier dynamic of drifting off in 15 minutes – but since it’s 2 AM instead of 8:30 PM, this never works. Three hours later, I’m wide awake and still reading my book. And it’s time to get up.
The good news is that I finish the book in time for book club. The bad news is that I’m a zombie at book club.
It’s not helpful that humans aren’t actually built to sleep through the night. Or, rather, we didn’t evolve that way. Historical and scientific evidence suggests that biphasic sleep – sleeping in two 3-4 hour shifts with a 1–2 hour waking period in between – was common before industrialization. People supposedly used this waking period to eat, pray, and talk. I’ll bet they used it for other things, too – being in bed already, and all – but my artificially intelligent research assistant is sometimes coy about such topics.
Anyway, the point is that waking up in the middle of the night – and even staying awake – is fairly normal and not necessarily a disorder. Science says so! Unfortunately, our industrialized culture is not built to accommodate this pattern. We no longer go to bed at sundown and rise at sunup, with a cozy, candlelit interlude in between.
Paradoxically, the social pressure we feel to sleep eight hours straight – and the fact that we’re told we have “sleep issues” if we don’t – actually causes “sleep issues.”
Last night, I lay awake pondering all the ways I could finish this column. I turned lots of ideas over in my head, and some were quite brilliant. Or so it seemed at 3:10 AM. I should have written them down on my phone, but… screens. Must avoid screens!
Incidentally, trying to write a column in bed is one of the only fool-proof sleep remedies I’ve found. It worked like a dream. (Pun intended.)
And I woke up this morning with nothing. Nada. All that brilliance had vanished.
Trust me, this column was supposed to go out with a bang, not a whimper.
But ironically, I fell asleep on the job.
