Sleep Junkie

I dragged myself upstairs to bed at 7:30pm. I had been tossing and turning for so many nights before that my insipid self-babble now wasn’t making any sense to even me. My sleep problems were wearing me down.

I can gauge the quality of my sleep from the night before by my Don King having-a-bad-hair-day look in the morning, or to the sheets of my bed having been pulled out from their hospital corner beginnings to the twisted train wreck in the middle of my bed. Usually an elastic corner or two of the bottom sheet has joined the fray.

I haven’t been to bed at 7:30pm since I was five. A time when falling asleep could happen in the middle of dinner or before number two was done. Bedtime was a cake-walk, whatever that means. I think it means it was easy. I think people who make up expressions like this have been awake for a week, or have been sniffing lead shot or felt markers.

I set my alarm on my clock radio for 6am, and fine-tuned in my favourite radio station to start my day. A generally pointless exercise as even though it will go off at 6am, I’m usually awakened to a static filled Hungarian cooking show intertwined with some hooligan sport from the BBC. (The English can make knitting a hooligan sport).

I fall back into bed, my head nestled into the pillow like a young boy between his mothers breasts. Darkness descended.

The alarm went off and I had actually slept through the night. No trips to the bathroom, watching the clock, or beating the snot out of Billy Dorkarino for swiping my milk at the Cub sleep out in ’69. Unfortunately, I still felt like I was ridden hard and put away wet. I felt short changed. But I had one restful sleep.

Next night I went to bed again at 7:30pm. The next morning I felt a little better. Not rise-and-shine-up-and-at-em rested, but a lot better.

After the third morning of going to bed at 7:30pm, I awoke feeling fully rested, alert and ready to take on the day. At the time I wasn’t working, so I took on a bowl of Cheerio’s instead.

This is great. This is fantastic. This is what it’s all about. My sleep problems are solved and restful sleep is mine.

That was five years ago. I remember it because it was the first and only time in four decades that I experienced the real deal. How did I do it? Can I ever do it again?