It’s amazing how much the act of sleeping affects our daily
living. A good night’s sleep and all is right with the world.
Interrupted sleep wreaks havoc on our lives. Just watch parents
with new babies. They walk through life with glazed eyes and minds
a million miles away, simply trying to maintain a focus on one
simple task at a time. Months on end of this interrupted sleep and
new parents forget their own names.
It’s amazing how much the act of sleeping affects our daily living. A good night’s sleep and all is right with the world. Interrupted sleep wreaks havoc on our lives. Just watch parents with new babies. They walk through life with glazed eyes and minds a million miles away, simply trying to maintain a focus on one simple task at a time. Months on end of this interrupted sleep and new parents forget their own names.
Too little sleep or too much sleep is another form of exhaustion. Too little sleep results in a groggy, hard to focus feeling. Too much sleep can also have these similar side effects. Catching up on sleep seems to be a physical impossibility.
I’ve always been an extremely light sleeper. Drop a pin on a rug and I’ll jump awake. My husband has the ability to sleep through almost anything. I swear if a fire engine went roaring through our bedroom he’d stay sound asleep. I’ve always been somewhat envious of his ability to sleep so soundly no matter what.
Through the years these differences in sleep patterns has meant that if there’s a problem in the night, be it kids, animals or neighbors, I’m wide awake. If it’s something solvable, I’m there. I’m always the driver for any middle-of-the-night emergency room trips. I heard the babies cry, the children get up in the night, the teenagers come in at all hours. My husband simply slept on, oblivious to the night activities in our house.
In addition to being a light sleeper, I have severe insomnia. The smallest noise will wake me, then I’ll spend the next hour or two trying to go back to sleep. Anyone with chronic insomnia will tell you counting sheep doesn’t work. The harder you try to fall back to sleep, the more your mind fights to stay awake. It’s a vicious cycle I’ve had all my life. Once, during my teen years I marked the calendar for every time I slept through the night. At the end of the year 14 nights were insomnia-free.
It’s rather ironic in my family that I should be such a light sleeper because at the age of 22 my mother was diagnosed with narcolepsy. For every hour I spend awake, my mother is asleep. She’s one of the longest living narcoleptics around, having lived with this debilitating disorder for almost sixty years. I often don’t feel fully awake because my sleep is almost constantly interrupted. Narcoleptics never feel fully awake due to a lack of REM sleep. My mom will spend her days trying to stay awake. I spend my nights trying to stay asleep. We’re truly an unusual pair.
But optimist that I am, I’m certain soon I’ll actually enjoy a good night’s sleep. Until then I’ll be thankful for the slumber I get, and make my blurry-eyed way through my days.
