Insomnia

Last night, it came. The damn wretchedness that is insomnia. I woke up about a half hour past midnight—a good three hours into sleeping—when I woke up. Last night it was because of C’s snoring but it could have been anything: one of the dogs hitting their crate while they slept, the moon too bright that our thin drapes can’t block out, a deer’s bleating out in the yard. So, I do what I always do when C snores. I come upstairs to my office, where the spare bed is, and settle in to get back to sleep. Except, for the next three hours I toss, I turn, I eventually break down and start reading the book for book club, and when that did absolutely nothing, I turned to my phone (yes, yes, I know this is problematic). Eventually, the exhaustion took over and the last time I remember looking at my watch was 03:10.

In the past, insomnia was a beast. It ravaged my body for the next day and my emotionally state was horrid the entire day. Like I wrote earlier, emotional regulation is something I’ve worked hard on this year and, on a morning like this, with heavy eyelids and a weight in my hands—these are the feelings I get when I am gobsmacked tired—being able to emotionally regulate is key to making it through the day. At the moment, I’m looking out at the tops of the trees, still covered in snow, the sunlight slowly making its way down the trunks, and I watch these layers of snow, sun, bare trees gently emerge into the light of day. I think, this is a good life.

Yesterday, I spoke with my new doctor about my insomnia. I told him I don’t want to take pills, not yet. He pointed me to this New York Times article about insomnia. I have yet to read it but it’s now at the top of my reading list.