I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?
Ernest Hemingway
Oh there are certainly times when my life has fallen part. Thankfully, that’s not the norm.
Still, I do love a good sleep.
A good night’s sleep.
I haven’t slept through the night in almost a year. You know the story. Old man with prostate issues. Sometimes it’s once or twice a night. Sometimes it’s every hour.
Usually, I can go right back to sleep.
That wasn’t the case earlier this year when I first began the treatment. I was up most nights. Often deciding at 3:00 a.m. that I should just stay up for the day.
I thought I was beyond that point, but over the past two weeks I’ve found out that i was only dreaming…or actually not dreaming.
It’s in those quiet times, mostly quiet, that I’m in bed trying to sleep that I think of all the stupid and embarrassing things I’ve done in some 63 years. Oh, I don’t get to all of them in one night. Just the highlights.
Sometimes I think if only I could go back and make a different choice or say something different. Then I think I don’t want to go back.
It’s like those memes that ask if you would go back to high school if you could.
The answer would be no.
Actually hell no.
While we like to think how life might have been different we can’t go back and make different choices.
After all, it only takes so many left turns in Albuquerque before you start going in circles.
In the middle of a sleepless night it’s hard to remember that our choices, right or wrong, should serve as lessons for going forward.
Besides, once sleep finally comes, usually about three minutes before the alarm, I tend to forget what I was thinking about anyway.
I do on occasion make writing notes. Or sometimes like Tuesday night, I’ll just get up and write.
Sometimes I even write things that are worth reading.
I’ve been told that the need to get up frequently will lessen. Hopefully, along with that the bouts of insomnia will go away.
I know that I have well meaning friends who will tell me that I should use the time to pray. Often I do.
But when you find yourself somewhere between not being able to keep your eyes open and not being able to fall asleep its a little hard to think about your devotionals.
This too will pass. Or I’ll get use to it, even if I don’t like it.
And if it doesn’t pass, at least I’ll have source material.
If I can remember in in the morning.
Photo by Nikki Normandeau on Unsplash