You know those nights when you can’t sleep? You’re soooooooooooooo tired, but you hit the lights, crawl under the comforter, settle in just so with your pillows scrunched and your toes dangling off the edge of the bed – exactly as you like it.
You shut your eyes. You think good thoughts. You wait.
And your eyes open, your brain is whirring, and every damn detail of the day you just had or the day ahead is slogging through your mental machinery and will not let go!
Yes indeed. I had one of those nights. Tossing and turning. Watching the clock and counting down the hours that remained for possible sleeping.
Two particularly tricky issues playing out in my head. One to do with my kids, and the other, a project.
To sleep, perchance to dream
Eventually I slept – though not long. And I dreamed – though not kindly. This morning as I flossed, staring at my sallow face in the mirror, I was aware that my nightly visions hadn’t helped, despite the presence of a golden gown and a mysterious lover.
In the dream, I was attending an elegant social event which offered opportunities to network professionally. But to make my companion happy (he was insistent that we leave on a surprise long weekend), I offered my goodbyes before meeting key people. I told myself “relationship is more important,” and off we went.
There was a sensual scene in a sumptuous room in which my lover was playful and endearing. After a romantic night under satin sheets, he rose, kissed my forehead, then pronounced us “over,” and told me to enjoy my drive home in the snow. Then he promptly exited Stage Left. And I woke.
Burned and spurned! Now what was that all about?
Are you sleeping, are you sleeping…
Remember singing Frère Jacques when you were a kid? Perhaps singing it in English, with it’s refrain of “Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?”
Would it surprise you to know that women sleep better than men in laboratories, but in “real life” that’s not the case? According to this article in the Huffington Post, women are lousy sleepers in the real world, and if you’re female and especially a mother, it won’t take statistics and studies to convince you of that.
The same article points out the benefits of sexual intimacy (to sleep), and refers to sex as “social rest.” Hmmm. I think I need to reconsider the parameters of my New Year’s intention to get out there and socialize more.
In fact, Huff Post has published a number of articles on women and sleep, trying to alert us to the dangers we may not fully appreciate. There are health impacts to chronic sleep deprivation, and far more than for men, including higher risk of heart disease.
Apparently, we’re taking our troubles to bed. And waking up with them. And carrying the weight of them around in our bodies – at least – if we look in the mirror, if we consider the ways in which we are impaired, and the cumulative impacts of our psyches working overtime to relieve us (if we’re lucky) or add to our daytime dramas (if we’re not). Nothing like visions that worsen your outlook in the bright and not-so-cheery a.m.!
Daily duties – work-life (im)balance?
Is it that “having it all” and “doing it all” conundrum? Women reaching for the impossible – by choice or circumstance?
I am not without some recollection of the blur years of caring for infants, or the blur years that follow, for that matter. Of course I was younger then, so the consequences felt less brutal than my current experience of lost sleep, involving juggled teenagers, new technical material to master, and the “usual” worries of our little household.
But what do you do when you’re sleepless – in Seattle, in Savannah, in San Francisco – or anywhere else? What do you do when even your dreams are reinforcing the dastardly daily dilemmas? Where do you turn for some sort of relief when it comes to all those niggling, nagging, ultimately oppressive stresses?
A friend? A pill? A shrink? A drink?
We now return you to our regularly scheduled romantic program
As for being spurned (albeit in lovely attire), I’m still chewing on that one. What’s up with the relationship echoes?
The plot line, slim though it was, involves exactly the sort of behavior that marred my marriage, as I turned away from opportunities for myself, in order to fulfill expectations for my partner. Likewise, professionally, I have often ignored issues of my own health and well-being in order to deliver on work for a client. Can you spell Type A?
Yet in the dream, I had every reason to believe that the relationship would continue. But the Man of My Dreams – literally – got his way, then tossed me. Not altogether unceremoniously, but I was caught off-guard, and spurned all the same.
Is it symbolism for something else entirely? Am I too tired to figure it out?
- Any strange tossing-and-turning dreams of your own?
- Better yet, any proposed sleep solutions? Warm milk? Hot toddy?
- How do you deal with gnarly dilemmas that burn and churn?
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I occasionally have a night where I’ll wake up in the wee hours and then spend the next couple of hours thinking about things that are not important and do not need to be thought about just then. Or ever, in some cases. When I was still working those thoughts would be about what needed to be done or what went wrong. As to your dream, I’m certain there was significance there, but this is a family channel, right?
You should have called me! I was up all night too. 🙂
Usually, I’m a great sleeper. I sleep soundly and deeply and have the tremendous benefit of having two kids who sleep well and a partner who’s an early riser and doesn’t mind hanging out with them if they also wake up early.
But I’m smack in the middle of pregnancy-induced insomnia, achingly tossing and turning and alternately thinking about mundane details such as when to order newborn-size diapers and more profound things like the recent shooting in Arizona. No rest for the weary, indeed.
I hope that time – both delivery and then the inevitable aging of a newborn – will help me restore my good sleep tendencies. But as for solutions for more chronic sufferers, I’m also curious to hear suggestions. (Husband is an insomniac who has tried – unsuccessfully – most of the traditional remedies.)
@Carol – It was a very PG-13 dream, actually. 🙂
@Kristen – I’d like some sleep suggestions, too! (Or to know your usual secrets for a good night’s sleep, when not in your third trimester.) And why is it that our thinking in the middle of the night ranges from the horrific news of the day to those mundane details, as you say?
Oh, how I hate lying awake at night, so tired and yet not quite enough. Often, the thoughts that roll around in my head aren’t mundane but anxiety-inducing – so I keep a stash of detailed things to replace them when the need arrives at 3 a.m.
“Social rest.” Hehe. And the kind that burns calories, too!
Perhaps the unconscious is suggesting that you must work paradoxically at this juncture: following the male aspect of the self (animus) away from the social-as-work in order to connect at the animal/anima level (uniting spirit and matter in a lovely encounter). Perhaps you are not spurned so much as validated by your animus who “disappears” in order to be integrated back into you. Then you make the cold journey back, but as a more individuated being, with the warm embrace within as you find yourself passing though woods on a snowing evening with miles to go before you sleep. Later, however, you may find yourself symbolically/spiritually pregnant with something unexpected (a new creative project, a boon that seems to arrive out of the ether)—but that’s another dream, perhaps even a dream come true… although perhaps tonight, sandwiched between long periods of deep REMless rejuvenation, you may simply get to truly sleep.
Wishing you all the best in any event.
Oh, I have the wackiest (and often truly disturbing) dreams while pregnant and they really do detract from the rest I think I’m getting. I have also entered that stage of being royally uncomfortable and having to pee every hour. I tell you these things because I thought you wanted to know 🙂 In all seriousness, I think this is an underexplored and very important topic – women and sleep – and applaud you for examining it (with your typical grace and wit) here.
I’m grinning at those recollections of the last trimester and necessary bodily functions. Oh-so-impossible to sleep! Actually, Huff Post has had a series of interesting articles on sleep, and in particular the issues for women. Something I’m following with interest. (Are you writing down your dreams? Sometimes it’s interesting to come back and revisit them.)
I have trouble sleeping because my daughter wakes me up in the middle of the night for some reason. I lie awake thinking of all the worst case scenarios of anything and everything. Usually after an hour of restless thinking I fall asleep.