The Perfect Storm

Yep, you are reading that time correctly. It is 2am on a Tuesday morning and I’m WRITING. I’m bored and not quite sure what else to do when I’m exhausted but yet unable to ease my mind by capturing a few of those precious moments of uninterrupted, dreamless sleep.

I’ve always had trouble sleeping. Between having horrible cheap mattress and a innate, animal like need to sleep on my stomach, the physical act of sleeping actually hurts most of the time. Then add an overactive mind and imagination, and what should be 5-8 hours of stationary down time becomes a whirlwind of acrobatic contortions and mind blowing journeys through my twisted mind.

And that’s most of the time.

Sometimes, just sometimes, what I’m now going to term “The perfect storm” occurs. It happens when my body fools me into thinking I’m very tired. So tired in fact, that the promised land may be revealed to me. I go sleep, and it starts off easy. But then I start getting flashes. Flashes are super fast mini dreams, usually not good. Tonight was images of crashes — planes, boats, cars, the works. As a result of the flashes, my body works up a lot of adrenaline, in turn causing me to need to move every several minutes. This is more elaborate and intense then my usually romps, leading to my arms getting stuck at weird angles under my body or falling off the bed entirely. But the trouble is, I’m tired enough that I don’t wake up. This is a bad thing because if I could wake myself up, I can make the flashes and tossing stop, calm myself down and try to get normal sleep. But because my body tricked me into believing I’m tired enough, it has to run it’s course.

The flashes eventually will reveal themselves to be part of a bigger story. Tonight it was my life on a submarine. I have absolutely no idea where this is coming from as I haven’t started reading my Pearl Harbor book yet. As many of you know, I’m terrified of deep water, so images of the vast ocean did not sit well. Unfortunately, that’s not what snapped me out of it, though I was it had because I’m assuming that’s what caused the drenching sweat. It was the image of a stingray eating my arm and the accompanying pain that knocked me out of it, because I had been lying on top of my arm so long it had gone numb.

“The Perfect Storm” can last anywhere from a few days to a month (which I’m crossing my fingers it won’t). What kills me is that nothing will work, not drinking, or Tylenol PM, or staying up until my eyes can’t stay open anymore. It will happen no matter what I do. I might get a night of reprieve, but it will go straight back. And there’s no reason to go to a doctor (I hate them, anyway) because I am actually sleeping in a way.

Poor Layla has taken to sleeping under the bed for protection. Let’s hope I get it straightened out before I pin her somehow.