The Cool Side of the Pillow: the diary of an insomniac.

(about 2:00 am) You lie in bed without looking at the clock. You've learned that looking at the clock is worse than not knowing what time it is. You've been asleep for a while, but not long enough. It isn't anywhere near morning. You get up to pee so that maybe you can sleep later than usual. You don't turn on any lights but the streetlights shine through the living room curtains illuminating the hall well enough. The bathroom is dark, but small enough you don't need to turn the light on. You can tell by how much you pee and because your son's light is off, that it is well after midnight.

You come back to bed and promptly have a hot flash. Given that you are in a mature marriage, and the hot flashes, you and your partner bought european comforters recently (his and hers like they had in the hotels in Germany you visited last summer). You rip yours off and lie there like you are in a hut in the tropics and sweat for a while. Finally, you feel your body slowly cool off but it is still too hot for the comforter so you pull on a lighter blanket you keep next to the bed for this purpose. 

You feel yourself getting sleepy just as your partner starts to snore. You could hope it stops or that you fall asleep despite it but you don't want to chance it. You scoop up your bedding and haul it out to the sofa. 

The sofa is blissfully cool as is the living room. You lie down and place a tshirt on your face to block out the light. You listen to the ticking of the clock on the wall. You fall back to sleep.

(sometime before 4:00 am) You wake up again and know you could possibly be awake for the day. You hope it is six but you suspect it is not. Your pillow is hot again and you flip it over. You grab some extra sofa pillows and lie on your side propping the weight of your belly with the pillows and putting one on the coffee table so your lower arm can straighten and be supported. You lie there for a while but don't feel comfortable. 

You flip to the other side and you also flip your pillow hoping it will be cool again but it is still lukewarm. You reprop saging body parts with pillows and put one between your knees. You start to think about the worries in your life. You chastise yourself and try to focus on your breathing. You breathe in and out and slowly thinking the letters of the alphabet with each breath. You have done this hundreds of times, sometimes hundreds of times in one night. Sometimes it works. But tonight it doesn't.

You contemplate what your day will be like with only five hours sleep. You think about whether you could reasonably leave work early. If coffee would even work with so little sleep. You know it wouldn't help at all and that you will work all day. You try to will yourself back to sleep. This is of course futile. You make the decision to look at the clock.

You wish you hadn't.