Another Sleep Entry

Saturday, March 16 2002

Sleep has to be one of the weirdest human behaviors of all. We need sleep to survive as do all mammals as far as I know. It sounds incredibly easy. You get tired, you close your eyes and you enter this other state where you experience your fears and fantasies. After eight hours or so, you wake up feeling refreshed.

I've never followed this model. In the past, I always dreaded the morning so I would extend my night hours. For some reason, I almost never got tired. Usually, I forced myself to go to bed because I had to get up and do something I didn't want to do. In those days, I had trouble getting to sleep but could stay asleep for absurdly long periods.

Now, I enjoy my mornings and my evenings. The pain usually wears me out over the course of the day so I fall asleep easily. That's where things stop being simple. Without Ultram, I wake up no more than an hour later whether it's from pain or not. When I wake up, there's no easy return to sleep. With Ultram, it's usually three or four hours later.

My most recent sleep pattern seems to be something like this. I go to bed and fall asleep with Ultram until around 3am. At that point, I wake up completely. If it's 3am and it's not too soon for more Ultram, I'll take it and wake up in another four hours. By then, I'm ready to start my day.

Unfortunately, I've been waking up too soon for more Ultram recently. That's given me the weird dynamic of having about two hours awake in the middle of the night. That's on good nights. Other nights, I never really get back to sleep after the 3am wakeup. I've been spending two or three hours in the middle of the night doing obscure online stuff.

My friends aren't up and around at those hours so I have to fall back on old journal archives for one. I'm impressed by how some of them age so well. I'm not talking about being dated. Journals are meant to be dated! What I mean is that some journals can be read over and over without losing much of anything.

If no one is around and I don't feel like reading, I'll start playing FreeCell on the computer as fast as I can. Meanwhile, anyone else who's having a rough night should be able to find me. I stay logged in for this. I'll answer just about any email in the middle of the night unless they want my credit card number.

Today has been one of those days so far. I've been in extreme pain or close enough all day. Melissa is taking it personally, of course. She was nice enough to make me up an ice pack earlier but I've clearly pissed her off since then.

We were supposed to go food shopping today but it won't happen unless I take charge. I don't feel like taking charge. I feel like cowering somewhere in this current moderate pain hoping to hide from the inevitable return of the horror. As I have said before, the high end of the pain scale is pretty much impossible to handle.

This has been a day where I feel like being found. What do I mean? Earlier, I said I wanted to hide. I also want to be found by something or someone other than pain. I want to be soothed and coddled. I want someone to tell me I'm great to be around even though I'll protest that it's not true. It would be even better if said person were convincing.

As much as I don't want to do it, I need to get off my ass and push Melissa. We need the groceries and could use a few additional items like razor blades. I will be miserable the whole time but I can't think of a better time to go than on a rainy Saturday.

On a brighter note, Melissa colored her hair yesterday and I really like the color. It's a very complex shade much like the taste of a fine drink. Depending on how the light hits it, you will see just her normal dark color, a color that hints at red despite not really looking it or a dark red. Call me crazy but I'm looking forward to trying different hair colors on her just like I looked forward to trying different fine beers.

The joke about coloring my hair seems more and more like something I will actually do. After all, it's something I can do to show a bit of external change. In any case, it's temporary and could be fun. At worst, it would be a pointless waste.