He cried 24/7 with a respite of 45 minutes, and we slept. For several months. I fantasized about checking into a hotel, ordering soup, showering and sleeping until I woke up naturally. When I did get 3 hours in a row, I woke up and walked to a coffee shop and came home rested and filled up with sunshine, hope and a double cappuccino. It is amazing what a few hours of true shut eye can do for the spirit. Prisoners of war are tortured with lack, deprivation of snooze time. New mamas, teen parents, unrequiented loves, finals, running in the red, and the list runs on, the list that can keep us up at 3:33 am. The troubles that nudge us to call 911 to our internist for a bottle of the tabooed sleep enhancing horse pills are real. And we need helpers. We offer up to the Gods our first borns, our BB King record collection, our first place medals and all the tea in the Harbor, Anything to get a F in good night's sleep.
I was one dishwasher empty away from pulling a Vivi. I wanted to take my clothes off, drape a long mink over my body, stuff the pockets full of cash, barefoot and head to the nearest room service white noise Hotel and Sleep until my kid turned 44. I was delirious, at an IQ loss to great to calculate, and I wanted to be Vivian, the leader of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (highly recommend this book) and get the hell out of dodge and diapers and the cry-fest and go the F*ck to sleep. Viv is a bit crazy. I was a bit crazy. We needed a good sleep to right things in our world. My honey that has chosen a new career path or rather the path has chosen him: a Mortician, an UnderTaker, Remover of Bodies, Cremator, Tender to the departed, Ash and Crafts understudy, Celebrant for big ass funerals, suffered sleep deprivation. He was wounded while he cared for the dead with his devoted heart. He stayed up all night to tend to the dearly departed and studied all day and found space to write heart breaking and heart filling stories, and yet he fell. He fell asleep. He was deprived and yet he gave. Like I did. Like you do and did. And then he slept and all is well. I have yet to meet a human that hasn't lost a phantom limb to sleep lack. It hurts and blurs our conscious life. We get lost in the delirious dance of keeping on. And then we don't. We all have a sleep breaking point.
I never checked into a hotel. I finally broke down and hired a babysitter and I slept at home. The decadence of tucking into your pillow at 2:15 pm for a nap seeps into the system long past wake up call. What do you want for your Birthday, a nap, I'd say. Sleep fills in the sand paper places of our story and makes it smooth and lovely like a glass of Cognac after midnight. Sleep is divine. Sleep is beauty.
I wish I could have a bath time, story time, back rub, off to bed time. Why is this ritual devoted to the colicky turkeys like my first born that preferred to holler like the wolves after dark, and not their mama's that fall like branches in a Virginian thunderstorm in August? I felt extreme shame and guilt at my weekly Mamas Meet Up Meeting. Everyone exchanged their Chickadee's success at pooping, sleeping, smiling, solving the Rubix Cube, and I sat stunned into silence by my lack, of sleep. I didn't fantasize about the Yoga instructor, or a new mini van or a manicure, I filled my head with soft down pillows fluffed and silence. I wanted to snooze. I headed down a downward twirl of sleep deprived delirium.
Moments, maybe a Monday to a Thursday, my fate lay in the fist clenched hands of this little crying man I loved with my whole heart though it was buried, the love, under a pile of dense cover, of lack, of sleep. I needed to rest my weary head and then I could love, I could open my heart and I could embrace my new career whole heartedly. I would blow a 5.0 if my tiredness translated on a breathalyzer. I had to shut my eyes.
Being sleepy stinks. Being exhausted feel like our nails are clinging near off the edge of sanity. Being zombie assed catatonic tired can ruin us. Why are we all so sleepy? And what the hell do we do about it? My kid grew out of the shit storm sleep deprived stage just days before he nearly ended up at the pound. Now I can not get my three sleepy teens out of bed. I love to sleep, to nap, to tuck in to my counted sheep. I acknowledge that my life is extra fantastic because I get enough sleep. I enjoy the beauty of my day because my eyes are open and my soul is rested. This too shall pass, they say. And it will. Yet while we are being tortured from lack of rest, we suffer. What to do about this epidemic?
Off to bed, its past my bed time. I will sleep on this.