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June 27, 2006
sleep freak
More and more studies are showing the benefits of a good night's sleep. I'm somewhat ambivalent about sleep. I enjoy it but at the same time I feel like there are things I could be doing or missing by going to sleep. I'm not someone who necessarily wants to sleep more than 8-9 hours at a time. But I wish that when I slept that I slept more peacefully overall. I wake up a lot and I dream like a freak. Some nights my dreams are so detailed and intense that I feel completely unrested. I feel always on the verge of waking up--that half lucid dreaming, half sleep state. It's not restful at all.
But to our credit, we have managed to follow most of the healthy sleep tips from the National Sleep Foundation. We go to bed and get up at mostly the same time--and even on weekends we're not too far off the mark, usually only sleeping an hour or so more than normal. We keep our room cool and dark, use it only for sleep and other private things ;-). We have a new mattress. I exercise regularly (most of the time). We eat many hours before we sleep. And we don't smoke. Sometimes we'll have a drink before bed--but usually several hours before with dinner. Otherwise for the most part, we do all the right things. We even have white noise. And I've trained myself to do two things I would have always thought impossible--to only hit the alarm once and to NOT look at the clock if I wake in the middle of the night.
That latter point is important and I know it's helped quite a bit. I would often look at the clock and see that it was 4 or 5 and think, oh crap, I have to get up in an hour or two hours. And then I would never really get back to sleep. I manage this much better than I used to, thankfully.
But more frustrating to me is the crazy dreaming. I have such vivid, elaborate, colorful and often very linear dreams. I wish I could remember them better or had the werewithal to write them down. If so I would have a gazillion novels or screenplays screaming to be written. But for the most part, they keep me partially awake and extremely vivid ones can also have a tendency to sit with me throughout the day, like a little weight in the back of my mind. Thank god they are not usually scary or terribly disturbing dreams.
This morning I was dreaming about sleeping in my old basement room in the house that I grew up in. I was the same age that I am now. For some reason, I knew that the person who owned the house--a woman I was not related to--would be home at 4AM which only gave me a little time to fix the special shovel that I had which I had been carrying with me throughout the rest of my dream (which I don't recall). I remember that there was a little compartment near the shovel head that I had opened and was going to put something into but the woman drove up and parked next to the ground-level window, which oddly, the window shade was open and it was bright sun (although I knew it was only 4AM). I rushed to climb into bed and pretend that I was asleep, trying to arrange myself on the bed like I was sleep tousled. I was wearing my red velvet bathrobe and I was worried she would wonder why I had that on in bed. But she didn't seem to notice as she got out of the Blazer she was driving and peered briefly in the window before heading into the house. When I finally heard her opening the front door, I bolted up and looked for ways to hide the shovel, which I knew was going to be the only way I could escape later.
It gets weirder and weirder after that. And it was only a tiny portion of a much grander, highly complex dream. I know that dreaming is supposed to be healthy but some nights I sort of feel them to be a curse as I feel on the verge of waking for most of the night and then when I finally do awake I only want to go back to sleep and catch up on all that I've missed. Even now, I'm sitting here yawning, wishing I could nap.
I don't think it's insomnia because I am technically asleep. I can't find any information on chronic dreaming though. I would love to be able to just sleep peacefully through the majority of the night rather than feeling as though my brain is in high-gear for the duration of my respite.
Posted by crystallyn at June 27, 2006 07:20 AM
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