Because it really is personal…

Oh, the wonder that is a good night’s sleep. It’s what tells me I’m not getting manic yet. When I’m manic I DON’T SLEEP. I mean, really, really….like lay there WIDE AWAKE for 3 or 4 days running until something breaks and sanity relases it’s hold. It’s not pretty. Not fun either.

I sleep the sleep of the medicated every night. No medication, no sleep. Period. There is something in the sleep center of my brain that isn’t functioning properly. The Good Dr. H. likened it to epilepsy, and my wakefulness is a sort of seizure, so, I have anti-seizure medication that I take for sleep. The good news is, I only have to take it twice a week, and in a very tiny dose. Which is very good because the tablets are $8 each and I’d have guilt if I thought I’d have to take the equivalent of one of Sweet Daddio’s Fine Cigars every night…which is fine for Sweet Daddio but Agnes McCalvinox would disapprove. However, I can cut those gold-plated diamond filled tablets in quarters, and take 1/4 twice a week so a $8 pill lasts me 2 weeks and I feel better about that. I probably eat that much in Subway Turkey on Wheat each week.

It’s usually a little more difficult to get up in the morning after taking That Pill, the bed is a tad softer and possesses a magnetic pull on my pajamas. SD, because he’s so sweet, wakes me up with pats on the cheek (if I haven’t snored too much) or flipping on the lights (if I hogged the covers and kicked him), and my sense of duty pulls me up and gets the morning ablutions done, all semi-conciously, until I can stagger to my rocking chair and SD puts a steaming cup of good N’Awlins chicory coffee in my hand.

by 7 the effects of That Pill have worn off, and I’m all set.

I remember when I first started having trouble sleeping, about…hm…20 years ago. It came on gradually, just maybe once every 2 or 3 months I’d have a single night of abject insomnia, filled with tension and anxiety, because I didn’t know what was happening. I’d learned to stretch out in the recliner and put some quiet music on (Moody Bible Institute in Chicago has this fellow named Mike Kellogg who would do a night show of quiet music, poetry readings, and he has this VOICE made of velvet covered chocolate that would calm me right down. I credit Mike Kellogg for keeping me from eating my children on many occasions). Since at that time I had 3 pre-school children, sleeping during the day wasn’t an option. I found as long as I could relax and calm my mind at night, I could function the next day.

Eventually I got to a psychiatrist, the Good Dr. H. and he tinkered around with these meds and those, we tried this sleep thing and that…none of the normal things like Ambien, Sonata, and so on would work for more than a week, so he gradually introduced heavier hitters until finally settling on the one I take now. In large doses it does charming things to a body, like liver and kidney damage, causes neurological symptoms like tremors, etc. But, I am taking a tiny dose, a crumb, so to speak. And it’s working. I guess my brain just needs a bit of a nudge with a pointy stick, rather than a slam with a baseball bat.

And now, 20 years later, I sleep the sleep of the clear- concienced. That’s not to say that I have a clear concience, but I can act like I do, at night.

And, while I may take many things for granted, like air and food, I will never take a good nights sleep for granted, because each time it happens is like a small miracle.