Restless Nights
There is nothing I like more than falling asleep easily or waking up feeling restful. However, this rarely happens. The other day, I was so tired I fell asleep watching TV and I woke up a bit later, thinking “Wow, I never fall asleep without realizing it anymore.” And it’s true.
Yesterday, I spent 5 hours lying in bed (and sometimes on the couch), trying to fall asleep. I took some melatonin, which did me no good. Mostly, I lie awake worrying about things that have happened, things that will happen. My mind keeps running even if my body is completely exhausted. It can be painful to keep my eyes open, yet my heart pounds and, in my brain, I’m thinking all sorts of things: ideas for blog posts and forum threads, layout designs, what I’ll eat the next day, how I’ll form an article for Demand Studios, whether I need to do any chores, what time I need to wake up to perform activity X. It just doesn’t stop.
I know I’m not alone and that makes me feel better but it doesn’t help, exactly. And neither do the cats who will paw at the walls, beat on the mirror, meow out the window, chase one another and claw at the carpet. I’ve been keeping a bottle of water on the night stand to spray at Goliath when he’s naughty (he’ll run at the sight of it, some mornings) but it’s so incredibly hard to fall asleep.
Or stay asleep. I’ll wake after a few fitful minutes of sleep and start back at square one. I’ll do this 5 or 6 times a night, some nights. It’s horrible. i’m sure the stress of my life makes it worse but, the truth is, I’ve always had trouble sleeping but I haven’t always realized it. Sometimes, we don’t realize that what we accept as “normal” is, in reality, unhealthy.
I know it now, but I’m still stumped. It seems like the effectiveness of my relaxation CD has worn off and I’ll have to look for a new solution.
I go through spurts, it seems some nights I could sleep restfully for hours on end and wake up tired. And then there are nights where I can’t fall asleep for ANYTHING,and everything seems like a reason to keep me awake. Oh, what’s that I hear? A cricket? Well I might as well just be up then. That sort of thing.
I hope that you can find something that works. Lately I’ve just been trying to read when I’m starting to feel sleepy so my eyes at least give up and try to convince my brain to do the same. It sort of works… sort of.
@Nik: Reading is one of those things that works wonderfully for some people but, honestly, does the opposite for me.