Fallout: Sleep (or the lack thereof) pt. 2

Why write a second post on the lack of sleep?  There is a different level for the lack of sleep I experience.  I’m not trying to say that mine is worse or better than any other member of the family, but if I could compare the lack of sleep to Dante’s vision of Hell, my lack is spiraled down lower in the descending rings.  To say it’s only my quality of sleep that is impacted would be a gross understatement.

I’m tired.  I need sleep so badly.  But I just don’t want to sleep.  I know when I go to bed I will fight with falling asleep, fight with staying asleep and fight while I am asleep.  And then there’s the fight I face when I wake up.  The other night I popped an Ambien and died in my bed.  After waking approximately 5 hours later I woke feeling refreshed, thinking that I had a good and full night sleep at last.  I couldn’t believe it that I thought I had succeeded with only 5 hours.  That’s where my sleep pattern has disintegrated to.  

Most days I long for sleep so badly by 1:00 in the afternoon, and not know how in the world I’m going to make it through supper time.  But what choice do you have when you’re the mom?  Take a nap?  I wish.  Who would make supper, ensure the children finish their schooling, manage the anxiety that would be within Vale as I rested and keep him safe?  That lot falls completely to me.

And of course, the last enemy of my sleep is fear ~ fear that plays out in one of two ways; either by keeping me awake or by bringing vivid nightmares.  My sleep is so light that every movement within the house wakes me with a start…’is that Vale wondering through the house?  Is he going down stairs?  Is he in the bathroom?’  That can happen several times a night.  And the nightmares?  Wes Craven could only wish he could get that creative.  Every single unmentioned worry, every seed of dug deep dread would take root and flower in my sleep.  Every sense would be involved in imagining; I could hear the rope pulled taught.  Feel the cold rain on my face.  Smell the acrid dankness in his clothing, the copper in his blood.  Taste acid in my mouth.  The horror entrenches itself so solidly, mere waking doesn’t disgorge it.

I need to sleep.  But I just. CAN’T.