I don’t sleep well.
I fall asleep beautifully. Fairly soon after my head hits the pillow, at night, I am asleep.
I usually suggest to Real Man that we watch some show together, to which he always responds, “You mean do I want to watch a show while you sleep?” which is basically exactly what I mean, but I like to at least pretend like I’m gonna be in the game for awhile before tapping out.
But, even though I can fall asleep in the blink of an eye, I can’t stay asleep.
I usually wake up around 2:30 to 3:00 in the morning. And the moment I’m awake, my brain starts racing. This is the time that I start trying to hash out the problems of the world. Sometimes I can distract myself by popping in my AirPods and listening to a show that I’ve watched a million times so I don’t have to pay attention to the story, but can drift away in the familiar plot.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Benadryl knocks me out, but doesn’t keep me out. Tylenol PM is my nemesis because it somehow gives me restless legs, which, of course, does not help me sleep.
So, sleep is not my friend.
Sleep has been made easier, however, by the introduction of a weighted blanket into my life.
I originally bought one for Monkey Girl, who has her own sleepytime issues and she immediately raved about it. I heard it was good for anxiety, so I bought one for Tiny who worries about everything all the time. He loved it.
Santa decided everyone in the house needed one, and everyone was…underwhelmed.
But man, I loved mine.
When Monkey Boy decided he didn’t need his, I decided I needed two. I can’t sleep, my mind races, one should be better than two, right?
And it is.
Sorta.
We have the 15 pounders, so I am now sleeping under 30 pounds of blanket, and that is not an exaggeration.
It’s amazing. It feels like I’m wrapped up in a big, solid hug all night long.
The only problem is that I don’t like to sleep in the same position all night. I toss, I turn. But under 30 pounds of blankets, I can’t really “toss and turn” as much as struggle and fight my way from one side to the other.
When I wake up in the night, my first instinct has always been to move. Shift to a cool spot on the mattress or pillow, readjust my neck, rearrange my arms.
It’s no longer that easy.
I’m trapped in position, because I’m now under the intersection of the weighted blanket that Real Man sleeps under and the two that I sleep under, meaning I am trapped under 45 pounds of blanket. As I struggle to turn over, I make sounds reminiscent of a heavyweight lifting competition. Sometimes I just lay there and deal with the crick in my neck and the Charlie horse in my leg because I know I’ll probably hurt myself worse trying to escape.
Sometimes, I can’t breathe, and so then I decide to move, and I’m fairly sure that is the reason for the tendonitis in my left shoulder. Trying to escape the weight of the blankets so I can get comfortable and get back to sleep. Some nights, the position I find myself in means that I actually can’t lift the blankets and so I try to slide out and off of the side of the bed. When I eventually fall to the floor, I usually just sit there for a moment and then when I go to climb back up onto the bed, I’m now cold, and instead of saving myself from more torture in about an hour, I pull the blankets back and climb back under because I need to warm back up.
I’m a mess.
I should just start sleeping without the blankets. I know this.
But, at this point, I’ve damned myself with these blankets, because if I try to sleep without them, I feel like I’m going to float off the bed and I can’t fall asleep because I actually wake myself up with dreams of, not falling, but flying.
And, if we are honest, those 30 pounds of blankets are 100% keeping me safe from the Pennywise-looking demon that lurks under my bed, just waiting for a toe to escape the edges of the mattress.
So, I shall stay imprisoned…I mean snuggled and warm…in my steel cocoon for the remainder of the winter. And when summer comes, I’ll either have to learn how to sleep on the ceiling after I’ve floated away, or I’ll waste away to nothing from sweating off every pound my body has.
But at least I’ll be asleep.
