Anyone would say I’m doing well. I’m healing, thank the great goddess. But. It’s hard work and by 7pm, I need to lie down. Sometimes that happens before 7pm. The nights are long in recovery. Much as I yearn for sleep, a little unconsciousness, a brief vacation from pain, I don’t sleep.
I have trouble falling asleep, thanks to a combination of pain and a new mechanical valve that ticks. I’m trying to get used to the sound, but at present it is like a dripping tap. It keeps some part of my brain in a state of wakefulness and watchfulness. Will it tick again? Yes. Always. It will still tick after I die. It’s fast. More like a loud clock than a dripping tap. It should be consoling; it is proof of a working valve. I meditate on making it my friend, my reminder that everything works now. This will take time.
When I fall asleep, it is not for long. Shifting my position means waking up. I’m up every hour, uncomfortable, and think, “How can it possibly be only 11:30?” Or 1:30. Or 4:30. But that is the time and there is more night to get through. Sleeping, like everything, feels like work. This is a hard truth of recovery. Instead, I would like the night to have 6 or 7 hours of blessed oblivion. If only. Instead, I get a series of short naps. If I’m lucky.
This probably sounds familiar in some way to many folks. Our sleep is off. I know this because there exists a booming industry dedicated to helping us sleep. From pills to podcasts, there are a lot of people ready to use capitalism to help me sleep. Sleep hygiene is a big thing. Meditation apps have whole sections about sleep.
We can’t sleep.
I once read an article that our practice of sleeping in one long block of time is a new construct. In pre-capitalist times, people had two sleeps—-the big sleep and the little sleep. In between, they would get up, look around the cave or the farm, stoke the fire, check the animals, have sex, snack. When capitalism took hold, the factory owners wanted people more productive and made their nights shorter by saying 8 hours of sleep in a row was the right way to sleep. Right for who? It didn’t take long for millennia of natural sleep patterns to be disrupted forever. But I sense that if left to our own devices, (and if we turned off our devices) many of us might go back to a big sleep and a little sleep. My broken sleep might be a good thing. It might be anti-capitalist. I like that idea.
Related to my poor sleep is my poor sense of time. Since my brain injury in 2016, I’ve struggled. Now I’ve had four general anaesthetics in under a year. That’s hard on anyone’s brain. I simply don’t follow time anymore. Don’t ask me the schedule. I don’t know. I cannot know. I use ALL the tools. Calendars, reminders, alarms. Those devices that plague our sleep have their uses. And I have my husband reminding me too. I’m lucky.
However, like my inability to sleep, I don’t think my inability to track time is just a “me problem” anymore. I sense that our collective perception of time has gone off. How can we possibly have lived through five YEARS of the pandemic? (Some find it easier to just pretend it’s over. Maybe denial helps them sleep.) How can it possibly be less than a month since the global order fell apart? (That is what has happened.) How can I have gone into the hospital in an era when the United States was an ally, and come out when it was a threat? Too much happens in a week, a day, an hour. Tick. Tick. Tick. It’s constant. It will continue after I’m dead. Exhaustion has taken hold and even sleep doesn’t seem to help.
To wake up tired is an awful thing.
Best to stay focussed on recovery, to let these ramblings belong to the night, and give the day to the little things we can do to get better and to take what action we can to keep our communities strong. Something to plan while I’m not sleeping. It’s 5:36. Maybe I can get another half hour of sleep.
