To Sleep, perchance………………..

It was almost a running joke in my early household. Not only could I sleep just about anywhere in my early years but I could seemingly sleep for truly extraordinary periods – my record in my mid-teens was 16 hours. My mother often remarked than once asleep a nuclear bomb going off outside wouldn’t wake me – to which I always said: Good! I always thought sleep was good, it was my happy place, cosy, warm, almost floating. Loved it……

Throughout my 20’s, through University and my early working life I had no real sleep issues. The odd illness might have kept me up – especially a blocked nose during colds – but generally my sleep was good, very good. Then, as I got older, I began to get the odd short bout of insomnia. Usually the cause was work or personal issues. Sometimes my mind/brain simply wouldn’t shut down or shut up and thoughts circled endlessly squawking at me. But such things passed quickly as I dealt with problems or the dealt with themselves. Later still I lost sleep during my long-term (for me!) relationship though not in a good way. I’ve never really learnt to cope with sleeping with someone else in the bed. I move around too much and part of my brain keeps alert to the possibility of accidently kicking them or pushing them on to the floor. I think it took around 3 months for my brain to relax enough so I didn’t ‘wake up’ exhausted with only the lightest of sleep achieved.

In my 40’s and now in my late 50’s things can, from time to time, get pretty bad. My periodic insomnia occurs more often and without any apparent cause. My stress levels are generally very low (indeed I tend to be the calmest person in my team for years on end) and I’m pretty good at not bringing work worries home with me. But, from time to time, I can drag myself to bed literally exhausted and the second my head hits the pillow – bam, I’m fully awake! It’s bizarre. I’m physical drained and can barely function yet my brain is 100% ready to get on with the day – despite the fact that it’s 3:30AM. I can feel it coming a day or so ahead of time – almost like migraine sufferers can feel the precursor of the dreaded flux hit them (being a sufferer in the past – touch wood – I know that feeling well) so am generally prepared for on average 3 mostly sleepless nights. Rarely it lasts longer than that – then I crash and sleep 10 hours before getting back to my normal 6-7 hours on a ‘school night’ and 8 hours at the weekend. But where this bout used to happen maybe once or twice a year it’s now happening somewhere between four to six times. I think it’s seasonal too. I surprised myself this summer (the surprising thing is, of course, that we had a summer) by sleeping like a baby during the hottest nights since 1910 (jointly held with 4 other years so not completely exceptional) rather than suffering with the heat. Whilst other people seemed to flag through lack of sleep I actually felt positively refreshed. Odd. Equally odd is that in winter I have a very natural tendency to hibernate but, annoyingly, far too often find it difficult to get off to sleep.

I’ve said before that I’m not really a morning person and people think I exaggerate when I tell them how bad I am. I say that the zombies in the Walking Dead series are based on my behaviour for the first 45 minutes after I get out of bed. I most definitely do NOT wake quickly. My body is reasonably OK but my brain…. Well, to say it functions slowly doesn’t really give you any idea of how little functionality I get from it until I’ve been technically awake for at least an hour. Naturally I don’t always get the luxury of spending an hour getting things together. Years ago I was picked up at the crack of dawn and driven to a meeting point (McDonalds naturally) to go on a bowling trip. When I got out of the car, after only a 15 minute trip from my house, I almost threw up because my brain couldn’t work out why I wasn’t still in bed. Luckily with retirement just around the corner I should get plenty of opportunity to catch up on my sleep without the damned alarm clock waking me u at an ungodly hour. I’m looking forward to that very much indeed….