Who Needs Sleep?

I have had trouble sleeping for as long as I can remember. It runs on my mother’s side of the family. My mom and sister don’t sleep well. My aunt Carmen doesn’t sleep well, and neither did my grandmother. I actually remember sitting up at night with my grandmother while she listened to Sallie Jessie Raphael on talk radio and did arm circle exercises in bed. I also have memories of sitting with her on the living room couch in the in the middle of the night as we watched the headlights of cars snaking down the mountain across the valley. She had a valve replaced in her heart the year I was born, so when the house was silent, I could literally hear her heart beating like a wind-up clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. In these memories I am about 5 or 6 years old. I am 34 now. That’s a long time to wait for a peaceful night’s slumber.

While I look back fondly on those memories, I still long for a deep, sound sleep. I have tried many, many remedies over the years, but have never found one that worked well. Everything I tried either didn’t work or had nasty side effects, and believe me, I have run the gamut looking for a cure. Aside from drugs, both over the counter and prescribed, I tried behavioral modification, massage therapy, cognitive modificati, herbal elixirs. You name it, I’ve tried it and was disappointed by it. Until recently, that is.

A few months ago, my chiropractor gave me a pill call Min Chex. It has all kinds of crazy natural stuff in it, designed to calm one’s mind and improve sleep. After taking it for two weeks, my sleep drastically improved. I still woke up 5 times a night, but instead of tossing and turning and then eventually getting out of bed at 3 in the morning, I would simply look at the clock, close my eyes and drift right back to sleep. It was the magic pill I had been waiting for my whole life!

This pill is supposed to help people relax in general and help with sleep. It certainly helped me relax. After about a month of taking it, I started noticing that I wasn’t nearly as wound up about getting everything in order, planning my week, cleaning the house, etc. as usual.

Let me give you some background. I have always considered myself to be “highly motivated.” I have never been a procrastinator, always a planner. If we are having a family gathering, I know the menu, purchase all non-perishable items and probably send out invitations at least two months in advance, if not more. My house is usually clean. If I say I am behind on cleaning, that is probably a huge exaggeration, especially in comparison to most normal people. I clean something every day, most days I clean many things. I reorganize my cupboards every time I unload the dishwasher. I clean out the fridge every week before I do my grocery shopping. All the towels in my linen closet are folded and facing the same direction. I fold my underwear. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is grab my coffee and begin some kind of chore, be it laundry or unloading the dishwasher, cleaning the bathroom, whatever. Got the picture? I just don’t let things sit. I can’t. It’s not in my personality.

Well, a month into taking this pill, I started noticing that I just didn’t want to do all of those extra things all the time. At first I stopped doing the extra load of laundry before bed. Then it moved to letting the breakfast dishes sit in the sink until I got home from work. Several weekends I didn’t iron all of our clothes for the week. A few days when I woke up, I felt so completely unmotivated to get dressed, I let the boys sleep in and was actually late for work! (OK, not late to the point that I was going to get into trouble, but later than usual for me).

Now, some of you may be thinking that it’s about time I started relaxing a little and letting the dishes go. You’re probably right to a degree, but it wasn’t the right kind of relaxing. It was more like apathy than leisure. I started feeling burned out, like I just didn’t care about doing those things. Then, I would be even more stressed than usual because I was unprepared for my life. I even cut back on running, not because I didn’t have the time, but because I just didn’t feel motivated to go. That was a huge clue to me that something out of the ordinary was wrong with me. I used to spend my days trying to figure out how I could rearrange my schedule in order to fit in a run, not trying to find excuses to avoid running. This new found relaxation was actually stressing me out.

I wracked my brain trying to figure out why I suddenly felt so damned overwhelmed and then it dawned on me. Could it be the pills? I decided to stop taking them and see how I felt. Within 3 days of stopping I felt better. My motivation returned with gusto. Yesterday I had an all day training for work. For some reason, they gave us an hour and a half for lunch. I ran to Giant Eagle, did my shopping for the week, even stopped to chat with an old friend for a moment, ran the groceries home, unloaded them and still made it back to the training center with 15 minutes to spare. When I got home, I made the boys dinner and then we walked the dogs up to my mom’s house for a while. We came home and while the boys played on the porch, I cleaned it. I also vacuumed and mopped all the floors down stairs and cleaned the bathroom all before 8 p.m. I put the boys to bed, read Jacob a ridiculously large number of pages from a book on sea life, and even had enough energy to make love to my husband before going to bed. We both went to be happy last night.

This morning I hit the ground running, as usual. I did some chores, had a friend’s daughter watch the boys for an hour while I ran (5 miles today), made soup when I got home, took the boys to Target and did some other odds and ends before Andrew’s nap time. After the last few days, I have no doubt that my magic sleep elixir was the cause of my general apathy. What a bummer. There's still no magic after all.

What happened to my sleep patterns? Well, as quickly as my mood returned, so did my insomnia. I’m right back at square one. I usually get a good two to three hours of solid sleep, then I drift in and out of semi-sleep for the rest of the night until I finally get frustrated enough that I get out of bed…and start doing housework!

Insomnia bothers me. It bothers me quite a bit. There have been times when I have considered bartering one of my limbs just for a good night’s sleep. My uptight, type-A personality also bothers me at times. I do need to learn how to relax a little and enjoy just being, without worrying about planning for the next step. However, I have learned one thing through the last several months: as much as both my intensity and my insomnia bother me, I would not trade either of them, if it meant changing my personality. I am who I am, and instead of trying to change myself all the time, I should rather simply embrace it. Perhaps in going with my own flow and ending the fight with myself, I will find my own methods of relaxation.

A few days ago, I was talking to an acquaintance about insomnia. “Some day, before I die, I will get a good night’s sleep,” I said. “I hope so," she said, "But if you don’t, you have all the time in the world to sleep afterwards!” True enough. True enough. Perhaps sleep is over-rated after all. At least I recognize the real value of planning ahead and being prepared. I’ll take that over a few hours of shut-eye any day!