Sunday, April 19, 2009

When people have amnesia, they start to call insomnia amnesia

How can sleep be such a dreamy, velvet drape or such a hard-eyed mistress, cheating on you repeatedly with the cheap and easy sleepers of the world?

I've been plagued with insomnia lately, and if you are one of those infuriating people like my husband, who could fall into a coma instantly while sitting up straight on a ceramic couch covered in tiny, sharp, conical objects, this post will most likely be meaningless to you (or yet less meaningless than my other posts, I should say).

But for those of you who dutifully take their chamomile tea, their melatonin, their valerian and their Advanced, Fast-Acting 5-HTP/Suntheanine cocktail and still find themselves staring at the ceiling at 12:45 trying to make out the face of Jesus in the paint pattern and then panic because it's now officially morning and dutifully swallow their 30 mg of Temazepam (aka "Restoril" - does this not sound like the name of a sword in the Lord of the Rings, by the way?) and black out for 5 hours, because that's the amount of time you get from 1 a.m. to when your child wakes up, this one is for you.

First off, has anyone else found that insomnia causes an insatiable craving for maple bars? Is this a medically-sanctioned side effect? Do you think my HMO would cover them? Anyhow, there are plenty of other irritating consequences, like being perpetually slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, falling asleep at inopportune times (sorry, honey), forgetting to eat ... anything green, neglecting blogs, blanking out on my child's name, and reading little Okra the same story over and over again (oh wait, he actually requests this).

But the worst part about my insomnia is that those things - those things that people use to describe other things? Uhh. You know. Those things. Thooooooooooooooossssssssssssssseeeeeeeeee thingalingadingdongs, thingy-wingy-dingy- Words! Words. I lose words. And to a writer, losing the words is akin to, well to use my second Lord of the Rings reference in this post *geek alert*, kind of like Frodo losing the One Ring. But not exactly, because the Ring is evil, and words are not evil! No! But they can be used for good or for evil, kind of like a sword. Let us just call this sword Restoril. I have temporarily misplaced Restoril. It lies in the bottom of the stream in Hobbiton, just waiting for one of the River Folk to STRANGLE another one of the River Folk and take up his mantle and wield it! For the benefit of all mankind! And then give it to me!

Sweet dreams.

4 comments:

Mamma Gina said...

Okay, this may not work for everyone, but my hubby and I have been taking 1/2 scoop of whey protein that has L-Glutamine in it at night. I sleep like I'm on TheraFlu without that hungover feeling in the morning. Jeff read something about it restoring your human growth hormone or some BS but the glorious side-effect is sweet sweet sleep.

Anonymous said...

i went through a couple years where i had a hard time sleeping when i was young, like around 10 years old. i feared bed time because i knew that i was only going to stare at the ceiling until 1 or 2am. it could have been related to growing or hormones or something but i truly feared going to be because i knew i was only going to lay there-awake. one night i mentioned this fear to karl hawkinson, who told me that he looked forward to sleeping and the feeling that the day is done and you no longer have to do anything. when he said this, i was able to see that my fear of sleep is what was keeping me from sleep. karl taught me to look forward to sleep and sleep will come. now it is easy to sleep and i drink coffee to stay awake, damn you karl.

charissimo said...

Thanks for the comments, guys! I love to hear what works for other people. I've been having some tests done, so hopefully I'll know more soon. But I am fairly sure it's hormone-related. Joy.

Katiri said...

I think you still have quite a way with those thingalingadingdongs, C!