SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP

SLEEP  SLEEPSLEEP

We listened to the audiobook until I couldn’t keep my head from bobbing up and down. I was missing dialogue, spacing out. Who was that character? What happened? It didn’t help the reader had an Irish accent, I could never understand half what the reader was saying but my husband being European caught every word. If we had been listening to an American Western or books from the South he would look at me like they were from another planet. We compromised alternating stories, most of the time I got the gist of the story so it was alright. My main purpose was to just stay awake hoping that when I did go to bed I could sleep.

I took a nice hot shower, I rubbed my body with lotion, drank some chamomile tea. I didn’t want to take sleeping pills I had done that before and I would still wake up but this time with a groggy headache. I didn’t drink my martini late, opting for a late afternoon two shots of gin only, alcohol in the past would only knock me out for a few hours and then again that wakening of fog which took half the morning to get rid of. My time clock was off and had been off for years. The difference now, I was dreaming which I had not done before. I never had scary nightmares as a kid, nothing but pure dreamless sleep.

My dreams now involve so many people and places. The people are solving the problems of the world, or they are the problem in the world. I’m not usually in the dreams surprisingly but people I know are there. Someone told me to have a piece of paper by my bed and when I woke up, I should write down exactly what happened, but I have never done that, lazy I suppose.

A Chinese doctor told my sister she suffered from “creative brain”. My sister and I are very alike so I figured I must have it too. It doesn’t mean you’re particularly good at something like painting or acting, it just means your mind doesn’t have a mechanism to turn it off, so it just plays out everything like a movie but just not in any order. That is the problem people and times and situations all get mixed up. There is no order, for instance , the dream could of of someone I am friends with, but it is a hundred years ago and they live in Toronto, a place I had been to and liked a lot. While in Toronto the person (imaginary) might have been an immigrant from Poland, that I figured was because I’m half Polish and had come to Toronto looking for a teaching job. Yes, I was a teacher and then pop, another dream one of my students would come to mind and then I remembered they had died and how upset I was.

Death would then take over as the theme of the dream and I remembered my baby sister dying and I, well right now I don’t remember where that dream went but it did happen, but it was so long ago. During the night I would wake, go to the bathroom, drink some water and hope to fall back asleep. This would happen at least three or four times a night. Most times I got out of bed and curled up in a chair afraid to look at the clock, but I could almost count on it being three or four in the morning, I would finally sleep until six my normal waking time. Those two hours were heaven. Solid sleep, no dreams, I had solved all the troubles. I say troubles because the dreams were never about sweet, pleasant times like when you went on vacation or when you met your first boyfriend. They were never about boyfriends or for that matter they were never about happy times. I felt like I had dug up old newspapers (when we had newspapers) and I would read about tragedies that had happened in the world. I would place people I knew in these terrible situations, like war and poverty themes. I would run through various scenarios of how I could help, like join the Red Cross and travelling to countries to help with the sick and wounded. I used to think I was dreaming of movies that I just saw on t.v. but that can’t be as I don’t have a television and haven’t had one for fifty years. I used to devour newspapers but now there are none of them around being taken over by the internet. I read books, mostly of the spy and detective genre, so you would think I might take some of their ideas to bed. They can get quite gruesome, the brutal killings, the torture and rapes, but I don’t. I suspect reality is even more brutal, so I look at the books as light weight dream wise.

I have tried yoga and have meditated but nothing seems to help.I am constantly reading books on how to get a good nights sleep but none seem to work. I’ve done the classic, count backwads from one hundred, count sheep, start at your feet and relax every muscle you can think of up to your brain but to no avail. I’m not a marijuana smoker and the first and only time I tried gummies it took me twelve hours to feel my body being normal. It was the sixties relived.

Recently I was talking to a friend who said he had drunk the new nonalcoholic sodas that had the minimum of THC (allowed by law) mixed in. He said it made him relaxed not high and his wife attested to the fact he slept through the night.

I am now on my quest for THC infused non-alcoholic drinks. I found a site on line where Willie Nelson the old country folk singer, is selling his brand. Now if anybody should know about THC and relaxation it is good old Willie.

I have ordered a six pack. Sleep here I come. Think I’ll put on an old Willie Nelson tape to lull me into dreamland.