I wrote this many years ago as an assignment for a nonfiction writing class I took probably 8 years ago now.
It's long, but it makes me feel like I should find time to write again. Not just journal, but actually write.
Nocturnal
You get different answers when you think about something at three in the morning andthen again at three in the afternoon. I vaguely remember this as a punchline to a Peanuts comic strip with Snoopy laying on top of his doghouse. I would like to always be asleep at three in the morning, and not thinking about things. It would make the days easier. Especially days when I have to be at work, which is most days. So each night I put myself to bed at the most reasonable hour possible, which ends up being sometime between 9:00 and 11:30, not exactly a standard bedtime. In order to combat insomnia, the authorities say you should go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning. That is part of what they call “good sleep hygiene”. I attempt to practice good sleep hygiene: no television in the room, blinds drawn, dark as possible (I even own two sleep masks), avoid reading in bed, avoid using electronics in bed. According to the rules of good sleep hygiene, the bed is for two things: sleeping and sex. If I don’t fall asleep within 30 minutes, I’m supposed to get out of bed and dosomething else, somewhere else until I start to feel sleepy again. The activities shouldn’t be stimulating: no walks, no chores, no TV (the artificial light apparently messes with serotonin levels in the brain and inhibits production of melatonin which aids with sleep, or some such thing). Apparently it’s okay to read. Or sit on the couch. In the dark.
I don’t wear earplugs. I fear not being able to be awakened at night if someone comes into my house (which I shouldn’t, because the dogs barking would be loud enough to wake me up, even with earplugs), and as a mother I want to be able to hear if my daughter wakes up in the night and needs me. No matter than my husband snores like a bear, and talks in his sleep. I also know he sleeps like a rock and wouldn’t be easily wakened by cries from a sad/scared/sick child in another room. So no earplugs. But I probably should wear earplugs, since he is often asleep far sooner than I am, and his snoring inhibits my ability to fall asleep because my brain fixates on the noise. I would like to smother him with a pillow. I jostle the bed in hopes that he will roll over and stop snoring long enough for me to fall asleep. With the amount of jostling I do in a night, I’m sure it would look to a stranger as if I was having seizures in my bed.
The fear of being too deeply asleep is the same reason I don’t use over-the-counter or prescription sleep aids. Well, part of the reason, anyway. They tend to help me get to sleep, but not stay asleep. If I wake in the middle of the night, I can’t take more. And then there are the side effects like nightmares, sleepwalking, I don’t like the groggy feeling that comes with sleep aids in the morning, and sometimes well into the rest of the day. And then there are the sleep aids which have the side effect of alertness.
So, I try to sleep the “natural” way, something that should come easily since everyone has to sleep. I should be able to lay down because I am tired, close my eyes and drift off into relaxing, rejuvenating sleep.
But I can’t sleep. Because my brain won’t stop. It runs a well-known list of to-dos and anxieties every night:
Laundry to be folded. Did the laundry in the washer get put in the dryer so it won’t mildew overnight? Did the dryer get turned on? Should I get out of bed to check the dryer? I’m pretty sure the laundry is okay I’ll stay in bed. The dishes didn’t get done, again. Did the leftovers from dinner get put away in the fridge, or are they sitting out on the stove, counter or table? I should get up and check to see if the food has been put away. No, I did put it away. I can stay in bed. Floors need swept, mopped or vacuumed. Dusting needs to be done. Is it trash day tomorrow? Bathroom needs cleaned. What if one of the dogs gets sick in the night? Or eliminates in the house? I’ll have to get up and clean it up which will wake him up. Did the car insurance get paid on time? I panic because I remember the one time I didn’t pay it on time and the policy got cancelled for 12 hours before I could call in and pay and reinstate it. Did I account for the auto-withdrawals coming out of the bank this week? Am I going to get an email notification that my bank account has gone into the red because I forgot about a check that I wrote for a bill, or have too many auto-withdrawals set up out of this paycheck? What if my husband gets shorted on hours this week so his check is less than we need it to be to make the bills? What if he gets into a car accident on the way to work in the morning? He’s a very aggressive driver, it could happen. What if the accident is his fault and we get sued and lose everything? What if I get into a car accident on the way to work tomorrow? What if I get hurt but my daughter is okay? What if my daughter gets hurt? We can’t afford a car accident because we can’t afford to replace a car.
Since I can’t sleep, I cheat: I stay in bed and scan Facebook or play games with my phone shaded under my comforter. I try to covertly read a book hiding under my covers like I did when I was a teenager sharing a room with a sister, so as not to wake my roommate with my flashlight. This does not work so well because my breath makes it hot and claustrophobic under the blankets and I start feeling like I’m suffocating on my own exhale that is trapped beneath the blankets. I try to divert my brain and bore it into silence so that I can fall asleep. When I was younger, reading would excite my brain and keep it awake. I could read a five hundred-plus page novel in one sitting, starting at about lunchtime on a Saturday or Sunday and finishing up late at night. Now, I often find myself nodding off when I read, even when I’m not near a bed.
There are times when I do get up from the bed because I have given up on sleep. I will creep out of my bedroom, leaving my husband sleeping like the dead and tiptoe into our daughter’s room and into the soft blue glow of her night-light that projects a halo of light with a drawing of the solar system onto the ceiling. I check that she has not kicked her blankets off and brush strands of hair from her face. In the dark the room has a quiet sense of mystery in the shadows of her bookshelf and baskets of toys. I make sure to close her closet doors if they are ajar, remembering the fears of my own childhood.
Once when I was small, I looked into my slightly-open closet and saw what I swore was the severed head of a bearded man; when the light was turned on it turned out to be a transparent tote full of crafting supplies that belonged to my mother. My normally familiar and inviting room would become something alien in the darkness of the night, especially when there was no moon. The closet door had to be closed against the invasion of dark, creeping things that would accost me in the night, grabbing for my feet, tangling my hair and turning my dreams into nightmares. I used to stare at the ceiling at night with various siblings as we tried to obey our mother’s admonition to go to sleep, but were agitated and giggly as children are at bedtime. We would make up stories and sing songs and look for pictures the texturized ceiling created from the interplay of light and shadows coming from the moon or from the streetlamp across the street. It was the opposite of the cloud watching we would do laying on our backs on our back lawn in the afternoons.
Some nights pain would shoot through my legs. Cramps and aches that would make sleep impossible. I would lie in my bed, kicking and stretching my legs trying to find relief and whimpering for my mother. I don’t think I was loud. In my memory I was never very loud, but my mother always came. Her dark silhouette would enter the room making soothing noises and she would massage the pain from my legs. Very likely she was not getting restful sleep herself, as I was one of many children in the house, including an infant after me every two years until I was ten. Those baby siblings would sleep in a rocking cradle in my parents’ room so that they could be soothed by my mother without her having to leave her room. She would only leave her room for the needs of the older children as they called to her from throughout the house. I’m sure she was bleary-eyed and unsteady on her feet as she navigated the hallways to our rooms as we called out due to nightmares, or pain in our limbs. I don’t remember what she looked like, only her beneficent shadow entering my room with soothing words of love. Growing pains, she called the pains that plagued me and would rub and smooth my rebellious legs and sing softly to lull me back into a peaceful sleep:
Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh.
Shadows of the evening, steal across the sky.
Jesus gives the weary calm and sweet repose
With Thy tend’rest blessings, may your eyelids close.
I often sing this song to my own daughter at bedtime when she is restless. I will stroke her hair and rub her back until she falls asleep. I will remember my own mother stroking my hair and rubbing my back until I dozed off, and wish that she could sing me to sleep now. After checking on my daughter I will often walk through the house in the dark. I stand in the middle of the kitchen, looking out the window across the backyard and how foreign it looks in the dark. The chain-link dog kennel is the Bastille; the garden plot a desolate wasteland. I move from the kitchen into the living room, hoping the neighbors across the street don’t have the floodlight next to their garage turned on since it interrupts what is otherwise the peaceful darkness of my midnight wanderings. I look at the dead maple tree in the front lawn and the quiet expanse of my street. I sit on the couch and cover up with the crocheted throw blanket hoping to be able to sleep. If I can just sleep, it’ll all look different in the morning.
