All my favourite paintings depict sleeping
It’s because I haven’t slept much lately. This is not unusual. I have suffered with chronic insomnia periodically since my childhood and almost constantly for the last 12 years. It wears you out.
I can not convey to you in words the depths of my obsession with sleep. If I could get a decent run of sleep, I’d dream about sleeping. If Johnny Depp knelt before me, and offered me eternal love, or a solid 8 hours of kip every night for a week, I’d be off for my first unbroken snooze right now. If he threw in a big fat diamond and a large house in the South of France, made of dark chocolate, I’d hesitate… then head off for my first snooze.
Sleeplessness has become a feature of my everyday life. Mostly I manage it – just spend the allotted time in bed pretending to sleep (fake it till you make it). Pretending to sleep is almost as good as real sleeping actually. I find this true of many things in life.
But sometimes, as for this past week, I have a particularly bad run where even faking it seems impossible. That’s when I start doing stuff like cleaning my house in the middle of the night (complete waste of time, I always have to re-clean the next day, and I can never find the stuff I’ve ‘tidied away’), writing odes to my belly button, or insomnia-dialling my ex (it’s just like drunk-dialling, but unfortunately you remember it the next day). I have made sure that I do not have his phone number electronically programmed anywhere, so I have to dial by hand. Most of the time, this results in me waking some poor unsuspecting resident of Southern California at 5am. Much preferable to actually speaking to the ex…
It’s ironic that I call my ex when I’m sleep deprived, as it was in this state that he convinced me it would be a good idea to get married. He had spent months trying to talk me into it, but I was very staunch. A pairing between him and me, was unthinkable; stupid; a disaster waiting to happen.
So it was while I was in an unthinking, stupid state that I agreed to allow the disaster to happen. In essence, I surrendered. Not something I do often. I am stubborn, and a control freak. And thus far, surrender has not worked out that well for me.
But tonight I’m desperate, and I’m willing to surrender to any experimental treatment to help me sleep. Go ahead, I’ll try anything I haven’t already tried (caveat – I’ve tried a LOT of stuff). Give it your best shot – I’ll report the results.
Oh and Johnny, in case you’re reading, I’m particularly open to any suggestions you have…
Have you ever used Essential Oils Ritsa (serious question)? I could help
I have Gillian, but I’m sure I haven’t tried them all… I’m open to it.
Tonight I’m trying listening to a podcast, courtesy of a suggestion by Jim.
Let me look at what I can find and suggest a synergy for you xoxo
What about visiting a sleep therapist? I just saw a really interesting programme about teenagers suffering from lack of sleep but after whatever the sleep therapy did, they were snoozing for 9 hours straight.
Have to put that one firmly in the ‘tried it’ territory. Saw a sleep therapist for 4 years.