Ugh

Hardly slept a wink last night. Don’t know why, but it’s becoming a little bit of a problem. Both the wife and I have had periodic episodes of insomnia since living abroad these last five months. I don’t think our location is related to our sleeping troubles, but we definitely experienced it more upon relocating. No doubt, at first this was due to changing time zones but now due to God only knows what.

Martha’s insomnia is considerably worse than mine. The last few weeks, in particular, have been torturous for her. The cause remains unclear. She’s under no particular stress or anxiety. She’s eating fine, getting her steps in most days, not over-drinking or consuming caffeine before bedtime. She gets sleepy, closes her eyes, and then, just as she’s drifting off, jolts awake as if a gunshot has gone off nearby. Needless to say, we are in Europe and there are no gunshots.

Don’t know what the insomnia is, and don’t know why it is. But it is.

As for me, on nights like the one that just passed, I find myself tossing and turning, discovering curious itches on my skin, a little too warm, then not warm enough. A tickle in my throat. A growing dread upon realizing how long the night is stretches but how soon the morning is arriving. It’s maddening.

Perhaps we’re simply getting old. They say the old do not sleep as much as the young. That may be so, but it seems like nature got it reversed. Young people have boundless energy and should not need so much rest. As we get older, our energy flags and it seems as if we should have less trouble slipping into rejuvenating slumber. Stupid bodies. Stupid age. Stupid insomnia.

I finally left our bed around ten to five this morning and watched a couple episodes of Homeland. Then I made some breakfast – Fruit ‘n Fibre, which has been my British go-to – and tried to close my eyes, which I did, for about an hour or so. Now I’m awake again and trying to understand how I’m supposed to make it through this gray and dreary day without collapse.

Incidentally, I’m on the last season of Homeland. Insomnia makes hoarding the last few episodes that much more difficult.

Bad.

I used to take Ambien every night, not so much because I suffered from regular insomnia but because I just really enjoyed Ambien. I liked the twilighty, hypnogogic state it put me in, the dreamy way it lulled me into the kitchen for guiltless, mindless grazing of anything carbohydrate-related. Was there some associated weight gain? You bet there was. Was there some “addiction” involved? Almost certainly. But my mood was good and my sleep was better. Plus, I almost certainly made shareholders of the Frito-Lay corporation a few extra dollars in dividends.

That’s win/win.

Those genteel days of carefree pill-popping are behind me now. Not by choice, I might add, but simply because doctors no longer so readily prescribe the stuff, which, I’m sorry, is a damned shame. Can’t a fella have just one addiction without “judgement”? Sure, I could go onto the Dark Web and order pills from India (again), but that’s probably not “safe” or “wise” or “legal”. So I have no pharmacological remedy for when nights like the one I just had.

As for my poor wife, I don’t know what to do about her problem. She’s tried melatonin and other herbal remedies. She drinks a nightly mug of “sleepy tea.” Nothing helps much. Maybe it’s the long stretch of our sabbatical finally catching up to us. After five months of living abroad for no reason other than we wanted to, and having no purpose on the daily other than maybe “seeing some stuff,” perhaps our lack of direction is impacting our sleep. Maybe we need to actually have something concrete upon which to focus our daily energies beyond where to find the best piri-piri chicken. (To be clear, I don’t know what piri-piri chicken is, but I see signs for it all over the place and I’ve been looking for an excuse to write “piri-piri chicken.”)

Apparently, 1 in 3 adults suffers from occasional insomnia, with about 10% meeting the criteria for “insomnia disorder,” a phrase I am choosing to not get further definition on because the last thing Martha needs is an official diagnosis. Why? Because that will send her running to WebMD, which will tell her she is dying, because the only thing WebMD tells you is that you are dying. It may feel like we’re dying when we don’t get a night of uninterrupted rest, but our health is otherwise good. How do I know? By avoiding getting our health checked out. When it comes to matters of health, I would just rather not know.

I’m kidding – I have a full physical scheduled for September. Will I ask for Ambien at that time? Yes. Yes I will.

Perhaps it’s good our sabbatical will soon be drawing to a close. I’ll be returning to our home in Savannah in about ten days, Martha to follow a few weeks after that due to a pending commitment she has in Rome. Maybe life back in the States will be restorative. Maybe the humid nights will lull us into a stupid and satisfying torpor. Maybe our familiar mattress will enwrap our bodies in a tranquilizing hug. I hope so. Because this sucks. And we’re almost out of Fruit ‘n Fibre.

Ugh.