For the past several weeks my normal sleeping pattern has been disturbed. For years I’ve been able to lay down, close my eyes, and be asleep within minutes. It used to annoy Michele that I could be asleep and snoring before she even got comfortable. Maybe twice a year I’d have a bout of insomnia and, after sleeping for thirty or forty minutes I’d wake up and then be up for and hour or two.
In the last month I have had increasing difficulty even getting to sleep, much less staying asleep. I understand that my entire life has been thrown for a loop emotionally, and I suppose it isn’t outside of the realm of possibility that the emotional stress of Michele’s death coupled with my Mom’s death are having a delayed impact. No matter what the cause I am not enjoying not being able to just go to sleep.
I don’t want to take a sleeping aid like Tylenol PM unless I absolutely have to, and since I am eventually getting to sleep I’m not going start drugs just yet. But I need to find someway to readjust either my sleeping habits or my expectations around going to sleep. Maybe it’s time to shift from being an early bird to a night owl.
