Stalking sleep

Sometimes I feel like I should be equipped with a sketchy raincoat and fedora trying to track down some shuteye. Not quite living in the 40s, but also missing my 40s when I could just lay my head down at the end of the day and find some rest.

I’m not sure if it is just my body rebelling against what it needs, or the start of menopause, but I’m over walking in the middle of the night overheated. There isn’t a fan or cup of ice right now that is helping that situation.

And I feel so awkward trying to lull my overactive brain back to sleep. How does that even work? How does the organ that is unable to sleep try and reasonably trick itself to let go and go back to sleep? I am having trouble imagining the conversation. All I can see is one person running back and forth between two sides of a room, arguing with themselves. It’s the same thought when you are arguing with yourself, or trying to talk yourself into something. How fired that conversation work? Is the you that you’re talking to feel different than the one who is doing the convincing? How often do you sit on the side of your bed and ‘tell’ yourself you have to get up? And does it work immediately? Or is there more ‘conversation’ to be had?

When I was a kid and had trouble sleeping I would imagine? believe? there were small men in my brain running the projector of my dreams but sometimes they were having trouble finding the right reels to run and so it took longer for me to get some sleep in. Other nights I would bargain with them so I wouldn’t have nightmares.

I don’t talk to them at night anymore. Maybe that’s why I’m unable to sleep. They were left forgotten and forsaken. The projector covered in cobwebs, the reels dusty and crumbling. Just a sole folding chair sitting next to an ancient machine, the air stale, unmoving and a flickering single bulb flashing out some unknown version of a Morse code.

The amount of caffeine I’m going to need to function today will be close to heart stopping. Maybe, though, it will blow some of those cobwebs away.