You are tucked in bed with your book. You keep dozing off, but try to read a few more lines. The urge to sleep overwhelms you so you give up and turn off the light. You turn over and snuggle under the covers, ready for a good night's sleep. You have been reading about the importance of sleep and you are ready to comply.
Suddenly, your eyes pop open, your body is restless, and your mind is alert.
I know this sounds familiar to some of you.
Then begins what I call the night regrets. Somewhere between feeling sleepy and falling asleep, your brain decided to switch to the channel in which you remember every thing you have ever done wrong in your life.
Years ago you were late arriving at your child's Brownie investiture. Why didn't you leave work a little earlier? Why did you take a particular path in life when another would have obviously been better? Shouldn't you have spent more time with that elderly relative? Why didn't you make that promised trip before she died? Why did you lose your temper over this or that? Should you have guided your child in this direction instead of that one? Should you have breastfed longer? Why were you so mean to that girl in the dorm? Why, why, why?
After going through a list of just some of your life's mistakes, you conclude you are a seriously flawed person, which doesn't help when you are trying to sleep.
Then you turn to night terrors, in which you imagine all the awful things that could happen in the future. You're beginning to see that aging isn't the glorious thing you read about in books with hopeful titles like, "The Joys of Growing Old." You worry about your parents, your kids, your friends. If you have one, you worry about your spouse, and you worry about yourself. What if you are alone, eating bread, and you choke?
By now you have thrown off the covers and gotten out of bed to turn off your brain.
When we were little, some of us saw monsters in the shadows of our bedrooms, or thought ghosts were hiding in the closet. A friend told me she was convinced the devil was under her bed and would grab her ankles if she got up. Every creak in the heating system was something scary. Night lights, those little rays of light, helped calm our fears.
Now the monsters are in our own brains, conjuring up ghosts from our past and future. Maybe nights like this inspired Charles Dickens to write "A Christmas Carol."
Short of waiting until daybreak, when the monsters disappear, what should one do to get some sleep? I've tried a night light but it keeps me awake worrying that I am disturbing my circadian rhythm, which might lead to all sorts of problems.
When Sleepytime Tea and homeopathic sleep aids don't do the trick, there is always Ambien, which works, but you don't want to use it every night.
What else does the trick? The sound of weekend afternoon football on television never fails to make me sleepy. I've had some great naps then. Maybe I should have the games running on a permanent loop in our bedroom. This might work, except my husband would be up watching them (again) and occasionally yelling out, "NO!" or shaking me awake to announce, "You're about to see the greatest play in football history."
