At least Endymion stayed cute

“Countin’ flowers on the wall,
that don’t bother me at all.”

Except that we don’t have any flowers on the wall, just a comforting, rose-hued paint. So, I can’t buck insomnia that way any more than I can do it by “playin’ solitaire till dawn with a pack of 51.”

I’ve always been a lousy sleeper. I’ve worked at eradicating it, but I still get visitations from the evil 'Anti-Morpheus' (AKA the God of Wakefulness) on an irregular basis, at least.

Right now Wendy is working away from home, so I’m alone here. That’s when my sleeping patterns are really disrupted. I have no trouble falling asleep, but comes 3 AM or 3:30 I awaken. Usually a call of nature wrests me from my slumber, but by the time I totter back to bed, it’s usually game-over in terms of slumberland. Wives or female partners are often irked by a male’s tendency to pee in the dark, and sometimes missing the mark. Well, the reason is simple. If one switches on the light any chance of returning to sleep is destroyed. So, we rely on sound. Anyway, women are at an unfair advantage in this regard. All they need to do is plant their cute bums on the commode and let go. That can be accomplished in the dark. Why should males be different in terms of letting there be light? But, I digress. Back to sleeplessness.

When Wendy is away the house seems terribly empty at 3 in the morning. That’s normally a nice time to turn on my side and cuddle. Yes, just cuddle – usually. Well, I’m only human. Anyway, cuddling with a pillow is a paltry substitute. Doing anything else with a pillow is highly questionable behavior and not to be considered here. It’s nothing to do with being lonely. I am not lonely. We have a wonderful relationship so I rarely feel the pangs of “oh, lonesome me.” No, I just feel kind of isolated.

So, I lie there. I try to clear my mind in Zen-like fashion. In terms of getting to sleep I’m actually quite adept at clearing my mind, but not at 3 a.m. What to do? The more I fret, the less chance there is of slumbering again. Winter’s not so bad in terms of early awakening. Summer is terrible because the light (and the birds) arrive so early. It’s not that I have a desire to be Endymion. I don’t want to sleep forever, I just want to get something resembling, say, seven hours. Eight has been out of the question for years.

And, of course, the longer I lie there, the more I think about things. I don’t just think about ordinary things like whether it’s going to snow or the prettiness of the girl who served me at the supermarket that day, but I think about ‘life’ things, verities. I think about whether I have done the right things career-wise; former relationships and marriages; whether or not I am ‘happy’; should I have really tried to tell my father I loved him before he died; how long I have left on this planet; how I’d like to die (not at all springs to mind); what happens after one is dead; what does infinity look like – and so forth.

“Tossin’ and turnin’
Turnin’ and tossin’
Tossin’ and turnin’
All night.”

As I said, I used to have a very hard time falling asleep. Life wasn’t good when I had bedtime insomnia. My marriage(s) were bad; work pressure was huge; I was fiercely ambitious and wasn’t really getting to where I wanted to be; I was madly in love with assorted people whom I wasn’t supposed to be madly in love with, etc. Morpheus really never visited in those days. Back then I would try to combat insomnia in not very effective ways – usually involving booze. A couple of stiff drinks would do the trick, I believed (wrongly). Sometimes it would knock me out, but then I’d awaken within a couple of hours, feeling like crap. And sometimes back then I’d literally lie awake all night.

It’s nothing like that now. Now I generally fall asleep, but now suffer (periodically) at the other end of the night. Since I no longer drink, that’s not an option. I’ll sometimes do the warm milk thing (not all that effective); sometimes I’ll read, but then I get engrossed in the book and even more awake; and sometimes I’ll simply say to hell with it and get up, consoling myself that Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison were both insomniacs and they lived to ripe old ages.

And, since I work from home, I can always nap. Nap and disrupt the next night’s sleep. Aye, there’s the rub.

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