Since I returned to the United States
from Costa Rica to stay I have not slept more than four hours at a
time without waking. It's not to do with a need to urinate, nor with
discomfort. Sleeping pills notwithstanding.
Some of the time, usually when I wake
after my first sleep aided by pills, I awake to panic. Almost
paralyzed with dread. I can feel the presence of someone. In the
beginning of these feelings I would huddle under the cover and strain
to hear whatever had awakened me. Nowadays I immediately turn on a
light and start telling myself that all is okay. No reason to be
afraid. I am in my bed, alone in my apartment and nothing can get me.
There is nothing to fear. Then I get a cup of hot coffee, a piece of
toast, and settle into my bed with my kindle and distract my brain
with reading until I am calm. After an hour or less I can go back to
sleep and get another three or four hours. This happens about 20% of
the time. The other 80% I wake, but am okay and after a short while
reading and a drink or snack can go to sleep again.
I have read that in early ages people
slept a first sleep and then got up and did stuff and then finished
the night's sleep.
"He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream."
Interestingly,
the appearance of sleep maintenance insomnia in the literature in
the late 19th century coincides with the period where accounts of
split sleep start to disappear. Thus, modern society may place
unnecessary pressure on individuals that they must obtain a night of
continuous consolidated sleep every night, adding to the anxiety
about sleep and perpetuating the problem.
I think of the split shifts at Indiana Bell where I had my first real
job. There was a bedroom off the lobby for sleeping between shifts. We were a crew of mostly young women and were treated as if we were in the nurture and care of Indiana Bell. Was this a carry over from those early patterns? Or simply the patronizing common to the age.
In another context I could explore the habit of crouching at night with ear to register in the
floor above the living room to keep tabs on what was going on downstairs as being the precursor to these dreads of the night.
4 comments:
Yes, accept the theory and go with it. The night terrors, though. Creepy.
"In the cellars of the night, when the mind starts moving around old trunks of bad times, the pain of this and the shame of that, the memory of a small boldness is a hand to hold." John Leonard
You have many acts of boldness, both large and small, to remember.
Not to say that the dread you feel has anything to do with memories.
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