To Sleep, Perchance To Not Dream

I hate sleep.  But, Minna, I can hear you protest–ok, no, I can’t, but let’s pretend–why would you hate something that is so good for you?  It’s relaxing and rejuvenating and other re words I don’t care to list.   Refreshing!  That’s often said about sleep as well.  Malarkey, I say.  If I could get away with it, I wouldn’t sleep at all.  Why?  Well, I’ll tell you.

First of all, I have always been a night owl.  When I was a wee little girl, I would watch my dad fall asleep reading a story.  My mom told me this because that’s the scene she would find upon checking up on us.  Then, around the age of six, I started stuffing a towel in the crack under the door after I was put to bed so I could read (I taught myself to read at age three).  I would read until about midnight before going to bed.  My parents never knew about this. 

A little while ago, my brother commented on how I used to sleep three hours a night.  I don’t remember that, but I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism when I was a sophomore in high school.  That meant that my thyroid was producing too much hormones.  This resulted in hyperactivity, insomnia, being hot all the time, crankiness, and depression.  I was put on a regime of twenty-seven pills a day, but it wasn’t working.  So, I got my thyroid radiated.  In those days, it wasn’t a very precise procedure, so they ended up destroying too much of my thyroid, as was their wont.  I went from hyperthyroidism to hypothyroidism, and I have to take a pill for it every day for the rest of my life.  The symptoms for hypothyroidism are:  sluggishness, increased lethargy, being cold all the time, crankiness, and depression.  So, I went from overactive to underactive, and hot to cold.  Great. 

What does this have to do with sleep?  Well, I believe that having thyroid problems began the fuck up of my sleep system.  Then, I became chronically depressed.  That didn’t help the sleeping situation.  Plus, I am hypersensitive to outside influences as I sleep (light, sound, smells, etc.), so I have corrected that by sleeping with a mask over my eyes, earplugs in my ears, a pillow over my head with the sheets pulled up to my nose, and a white noise machine cranked on high.  In addition, I grind my teeth as I sleep, so I wear a mouth guard to prevent that.  On top of all that, I snore.  Which means I probably have sleep apnea.  These are the physical problems I have with sleep.

Then, there’s the question of sleeping next to someone.  I can’t do it.  I am too consciously aware of the other person’s presence in MY bed, and I resent that person for it.  Since most of my partners have been male, I will use the male pronoun from here on out.  I hate the feeling that I don’t have much space, and the person I am with inevitably steals the blankets.  Mind you, I have never lived with someone, but when I’ve had a bed partner, sleep has never come easily. 

I don’t like to cuddle before falling asleep.  I like to put my hand on the other person, but to have no other body contact.  In other words, I prefer sleeping solo.  This preference is so strong, it extends to not like having someone else in the house.  My mom is visiting right now, and I have a hard time sleeping.  Last night, I slept a little under five hours and then just could not sleep any longer.  In addition, (and this is in general), I take up to an hour to fall asleep, and I awake at least once a night.  It’s more often two to five times, though, and it’s not always easy to fall back asleep.

The worst part, however, are the dreams.  I remember at least one dream a night, and I’ve remembered up to four in one night.  Now, if I had dreams like Natasha of reading a book, say, then it wouldn’t be so bad.  However, I have dreams that are filled with incest, rape, murder, and other horrible things.  During one period of my life, friends were dying at such a rapid clip in my dreams, one friend joked that you weren’t really a friend of Minna if you didn’t die in one of her dreams.  That would be MY dreams, thank you very much. 

Normally, I dream as if I’m watching a movie.  There is a watcher in the dream (me) watching what is happening.  There is sometimes a soundtrack (cue scary music when something bad is about to happen); a definite staged feeling to most of the dreams; oh yeah, there is often times a narrator, too.  You know the kind.  The supercilious prat who tries to appear solemn and portending of the doom that is about to happen.  Instead, he is an irritating, pretentious twit who should SHUT THE FUCK UP.  I can SEE what is happening in my dreams.  I don’t need someone to tell me, “Daisy is hiding in the closet.  He is about to shoot her.”  It’s even more irritating when he is narrating what is about to happen to me (the actor) as I’m watching (the audience) because I can both see it (as the latter) while experiencing it (as the former).  Hearing some anonymous jackass droning, “She is about to get raped” as I’m about to get raped is just adding injury to insult.

Then, there are the gross dreams.  I have dreamt that I’ve had thick slices of ham and juicy peas oozing out the soles of my feet as my mom is talking to me about painting the house.  The recurring dreams.  The one I’ve had most often is that I’m in school, and I’m late for class/haven’t done my homework/ can’t remember my locker combo.  The last is the most irritating because I have to go to the registrar’s office and stand in line to get my combo, thus missing more class.

Then, there’s the waking-up-from-a-dream-only-to-be-in-another-dream fun.  The fun is compounded when it’s waking up from a nightmare into the SAME nightmare.  Good times.  My favorite dream of all, however, is the one in which I stopped breathing.  Yeah, that was fun.

I am a huge fan of  The Sandman series, written by Neil Gaiman.  Thanks, Natasha, for opening my eyes to the world of graphic novels.  However, I have a love/hate relationship with Dream (Morpheus) as Gaiman has captured much of how I feel about the deity.  He is sullen, self-absorbed, moody, and vengeful.  He cast a lover into eternal suffering because she refused to be with him.  Yeah, that’s the Dream of my, er, dreams.  I even wrote a novel based on The Endless (what he and his siblings are collectively known as), and I hope that I can bypass copywright laws in order to get it published.  Once I rewrite the ending to my satisfaction.

In the past, I have tried so many things to sleep better.  I have tried shifting my schedule.  I have tried staying up for seventy-two hours on end (there’s a theory that doing this can shortwire the depression thing in your brain that makes it hard to sleep properly), which helped briefly.  I only made it to sixty hours, and I had to drive to the hospital near the end of the experiment because Kiki had prematurely given birth (I was so tired I forgot how to get back home), but it did give me a short boost.  Unfortunately, it was also pretty hard on me, so I never did it again.

I have tried all the sleepy teas–nada.  Valerian made me suicidal because I couldn’t function at my normal pace the next day.  I felt as if I were on half-speed, and I hated it.  Melatonin had no effect on me.  Sleeping pills work too well, and I can’t wake up the next day.  I can take a fourth of the smallest dose, and I am still logy the next day.

I’ve tried sleeping in different rooms and on the couch.  The cats don’t sleep with me because of my allergies and because I have a hard enough time falling asleep as it is.  I’ve tried warm milk, and I’ve tried hot baths.  Exercise, not exercising, sex, no sex–it doesn’t matter.  Nothing helps me sleep better.  For as long as I can remember, I have never woken up feeling refreshed, reinvigorated, or renewed.  In fact, I am often more tired when I get up than when I go to bed.  That’s why I don’t pay attention to when I go to bed–it doesn’t matter.   The only thing left to try is a sleep study, but I want to save it for a rainier day.  I hate using up my last resort.