I’m wide awake
Katy Perry
Insomnia is something that affects a wide range of people. My personal battle with insomnia started young — the hypervigilance I adopted because of the uncertainty and stressors of my home life as a child rooted sleepnesses deep in my psyche, and other life factors have impeded sleep ever since — and while I now have periods where I sleep fairly well, I also have nights where I’m so exhausted by my attempts to sleep that by the time morning comes and it’s okay for me to be awake, I feel like I need a nap.
Lately I’ve been, I’ve been losing sleep
One Republic
Nights where I wake up multiple times between midnight and 5:00am are not uncommon.
This particular form of unrest hit its peak when my dog‘s health was in decline — she got dementia, poor thing; it was like having to constantly having to keep one ear cocked for a baby crying because she would freak.OUT in the middle of the night — but has continued off and on ever since. The aforementioned hypervigilance returned with a vengeance during that time and has rarely given me a rest (pun intended) since.
Now, though, instead of stress/tension/fear being the primary factor…
It’s age.
We’re running with the shadows of the night
Pat Benatar
Yes, that’s what I said: AGE.
Welcome to menopause. (Yes, insomnia is part of it — YAY.)
My bladder — which has always been smaller than a chickpea — regularly and urgently wakes me at 2:00am. My hormones — a lovely tangle of WTF even before this “change of life” — sometimes go haywire with hotflashes. Typically around 3:23am. So I kick my covers off and then wake up again, teeth chattering and bones frozen, at 4:57am.
Add in my strange phenomena of sensory dreaming, my tendency to remember Very Important Things That Must Be Done RIGHT NOW at around 1:29am, and my overdeveloped sense of promptness prompting me to wake repeatedly before my alarm on mornings when I have to get up early for work…
And, well…
I don’t really get any sleep.
And when I call, will you walk gently through my shadow?
Stevie Nicks
I am, apparently, a bit of a night bird.
Not a stayupallnight bird. Not exactly.
But a night bird nonetheless.
(Even though by the time night rolls around again the day after, I’m utterly exhausted.)
I do my best to counter it — I take melatonin as part of my migraine prevention regimen2, and that helps; one of my prescription medications for the same condition causes drowsiness; I try not to drink caffeinated beverages other than my morning coffee; I eat decently (healthily), I hydrate; my before-bed ritual includes going pee even if I don’t really have to go (and doesn’t *that* remind me of my mother! *laugh* ~ “I don’t care if you ‘don’t have to go’, you need to go anyway!” was her pre-road-trip mantra1) — but STILL.
: sigh :
Sweet dreams til sunbeams find you
The Mamas and The Papas
But then, every so often, I catch a break.
I sleep.
For 4-6 hours straight.
When THAT happens, watch out world.
Because when I’m awake after a night like that…
I’m wide awake
Katy Perry
.
.
This post is part of my September Song Project. (Click the badge for more info.) Besides the not-necessarily-about-sleep “insomnia” lyrics quoted throughout (with links to the music in the text), the title to this post is taken from Pat Benatar’s 1988 album by the same name.
.
FOOTNOTES:
1There was one notable time in my youth when I probably should have followed that advice a little more closely.
2As this is an entirely separate — though partially menopausally-related — topic, I will not go too much into my head problems (*laugh*) here. But if you are interested in reading more along those lines, please let me know.
That sounds terrible. I can relate to some of it on occasion, but my insomnia is rare are almost always connected to either having had coffee after 5:00 pm (now I just insist on decaf if someone offers that after-dinner cup) or more commonly money worries, which right now have eased a bit. Other than that I am usually OK. You genuinely have my sympathy on this because I love sleeping almost as much as being awake, and it seems you are being deprived of one of life’s potential joys.
I’m kind of used to it; it’s actually better right now than it’s been in a while. And I try to listen to my body, so I will take a nap mid-day once in a while if I’m feeling wiped out.
I am right where you are where sleep is concerned, and always long for those nights when I get 4-6 hours of sleep without any interruptions. Those don’t come along frequently, unfortunately…
Thanks for sharing 🙂
~ Marie xox
The fact that 4-6 hours feels like A LOT should be strange, I guess. But we all have our own ‘normal’.
I totally get the being awake in the middle of the night…a kind of ‘fun’ (in a way) thing about that is that my upstaairs neighbor, an older housebound lady, is also up at all hours of the night, so if we should hear each other, we call each other on the phone for one of our frequent How Are You Doing chats at 4 am or whatever ha
Because I’m retired it’s not a stress about being tired for work in the morning – yet a few times a year I still have vivid disturbing dreams that I’m late for work, big panic… but then in the dream I tell myself oh, this is just a dream, it’s alright..then I wake up haha
Oh gosh… The late for work panic!!! I totally get that. *laugh*
After I had my stroke, I wound up with a horrible case of insomnia and sometimes I was afraid to go to sleep since, according to my neurologist, I was still in the danger period of having another stroke. It would be terrible lying in bed, trying to sleep or just rest and watching the sun come up. I tried sleeping pills and they worked for a little while; I guess my brain caught on to that “trick” and decided it wasn’t going to work any more… plus those things weren’t cheap.
I started covering my eyes and stuffing ear buds in my ears to listen to a set of audiobooks I enjoyed… and the narrator’s voice would put me right to sleep… until my traitorous bladder would make me get up. I still do it and other than sometimes having to get up to pee – and because I didn’t do it before I went to bed – I sleep.
Ohhh… Yes, that makes so much sense! That body-alertness from being in a health-compromised situation.
In a nutshell: goodbye health.
It definitely has detrimental effects on my health; sleep is restorative, so when restoration is lacking, the little things can snowball very quickly.