him: you just need to learn how to blank your mind.
then i usually give him one of those looks that speaks volumes... and none of it is stuff he really wants to hear.
the worst part is that i know exactly why this happens. i get stressed and/or frustrated, and my mind instantly starts working overtime, which is one of the chief enemies of a good night's sleep. my stress response in life can pretty much be summarized as 'insomnia and ice cream'. meanwhile, he starts snoring at the first sign of stress. so unfair.
him: it will sort itself while i sleep.
then i just shake my head... and i start digging through the freezer for some Häagen-Dazs, because clearly i need to do a bit of stressing on his behalf.
so, this is where you find me. i had about half a million things i wanted to do before it starts snowing again. Summer is halfway through, and i am struggling to maintain enough sanity to fall asleep most days. i think it is fair to say that some of those ambitions will have to be tabled for some other year.
for example, we made lofty plans to reupholster our two sofas this Summer. we even went to the fabric store and walked through aisle after aisle of pretty, suitable fabrics. that experience proved to be overwhelming. there are approximately five billion upholstery fabric designs in existence, and there is a bolt of every single one of them in that fabric store.
that is when the panic kicked in.
what if i change my mind about which design i want while the guy is already cutting the fabric? what if we mess up the fabric and have to spend another chunk of money to replace it? or, what if we realize that we really are too stupid to operate his dad's air compressor? [if you were here when we tried to get the thing started for the first time, you would already have the answer to that last question.]
so we decided to start with something slightly-less-ambitious, and we got enough fabric to refinish the dining chairs... and we also took a trip to Home Depot to purchase an electric heavy-duty stapler that did not leave us both feeling like we just failed an IQ test.
this is what the chairs looked like before. seriously, what kind of lunatic covers chairs in almost-white fabric?
he removed all of the staples...
and we added the new fabric to the cushioned bases.
a few million super-heavy-duty staples later, and we had new fabric on the chairs.
we chose this fabric in part because it lacks total symmetry, which means that it will be a challenge to my brand of OCD for years to come. there was a small bit leftover, which has been added to my sewing pile to be turned into a zippered bag for storing yarny things.
i feel almost ready to tackle those two sofas... just as long as there is ice cream in the freezer for when things go terribly wrong.
ahh. I too have that hamster cage at bedtime, and from the time I was old enough to count, I did. Some nights I could get up to the ten thousands (using fingers, fists, --oh, that sounds naughty--and arm parts to keep track of each section. fingers were hundreds, A foot could be a holding place for thousands, and sooner or later I'd drift off.
ReplyDeleteI finally found something, about twenty years ago, that works a treat. First you have to build yourself an imaginary door to put all those galloping thoughts behing. Put it somewhere safe in your head, and when you get ready to sleep, visualize the door (mine is a great dark oak door that looks like it belongs in a medieval castle, in the middle of a dark wood) as being shut and having no handle. All your thoughts are behind it.
When you lie down, feel yourself settle into the mattress, relax. Take a long slow breath, and concentrate on that. In, out. do that three or four times, letting yourself settle in a little deeper each time, and ignore the pounding on that door you built. If that doesnt work, I take myself on a long long walk on an imaginary trail. Go where it leads you, and focus on the trip, not the destination.
It does work.
the problem with shutting that particular door is that my subconscious always sees fit to kick it open when i finally manage to fall asleep. i have dreams some nights that make insomnia seem like the nicer option for the following day or two. i don't handle certain types of stress well, and this has been the case for my whole life. the insomnia part kicked in somewhere around high school, and it seems to have gotten worse of late. and it is always the stuff over which i have little-to-no control, which just makes the frustration that much worse.
Deletethe one thing that helps a bit is to literally drown it out with certain types of white noise, like the sound of thunderstorms or ocean waves. it has to be the non-totally-soothing type. i am not good at ignoring background noise (which is why the non-stop construction that happens around here in the Summer drives me bonkers). that kind of noise manages to interrupt my train of thought just enough for me to calm down toward sleep.
i could keep a team of therapists writing books for a few decades. luckily, he sleeps through anything.
I take your point. My trouble is not enough noise. We live in the country, far from any roads, and I grew up on a back road which in those days was nearly deserted. Dark. Silent. The mind just sees that as a canvas, doesn't it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to visit my grandmother in Mass., she lived on a one way street, and I would hit that pillow, count six cars, and wake up hours later.
(for me and my Asperger's leanings, counting was always a way to settle me in). But the sound of those cars humming by, and the lights, helped me to focus. And when we ived down there later on, there was a huge coca cola sign across the river, on and off all night long. Flash, flash, flash, snore...
I think it's what we focus on, something rhythmic and regular, and that can be numbingly boring for just long enough to put you out. Like drifting off in a lecture hall during Dr. Dreadful's famous "why we are here on earth" presentation.
The door I see is impervious to kicking, dynamite, or threats. It just sits there like a video game door. My entire life history waits behind it, with my mother waiting at the entrance. No WAY do I open that door.
having lived on one-way streets for most of my life, i definitely agree about counting cars as a helpful tool for quieting the mind, sort of like the proverbial counting of sheep. that Coca Cola light, however, would have driven me up several walls. i am an absolute-darkness sleeper and things like digital alarm clocks or the power lights on electronic gadgets have been known to keep me awake.
Deleteand, yes... that door does seem to attract the most interesting of gate-keepers.