Sleeping Pills

My body is discovering some wonderful benefits to the slimmer me, including sleeping again. Yesterday morning, I was so comfy in my little nest that I wanted to brew a cup of hot coffee and climb back under the covers with a good book. Forget going to work: just hang on to the wonderful feeling of being surrounded by my bedding.

There have been no recent nightmares, no waking up screaming, no tossing and turning. I don't know if I'm still talking and making weird noises, but there's no one here to disturb, so it's okay if that's still going on. Yeah, I still find myself wide awake at 3:30 am, a hang-over from the master's degree frenzy, but fewer and fewer nights exist that I don't sleep soundly and through the night.

As a child, I seldom dreamed--unless it was a nightmare. I don't remember dreaming during the night, but I know my mind drifted off often during the day. Nighttime was a scary time for me, but I'm not sure why. I still feel the tightness of my closed eyes, the covers shrouding my head, and the stiffness of my clenched body as I tried to sleep. Often, I would stay awake, rather than even trying to sleep, because sleeping wasn't a release or a restorative.

I know how much I dreaded the battles of the day, which began with waking up still stressed from the night, and compounded with my mother's daily ranting and raving about whatever triggered her any particular morning. I often left early for the bus stop, really early, and walked sometimes a mile to a distant bus stop, just so I could be somewhere else! I found refuge in fleeing, and sometimes I still do that.

There was so much conflict, conflict that may be normal in a large family, five children birthed during the same six years, and then another child born six years later. My parents didn't have good coping skills and were marginal parents, but they gave whatever they had to keep us together and functional. We were as successful as any other family during the time of our youth. When my father died, we imploded because none of us knew how to mourn, how to grieve, how to cope. Family members scattered, finding personal refuge wherever they could, even fighting in the jungles of Vietnam (2 brothers) and marrying men we scarcely knew, which is what both I and my sister did. Three brothers shared the darkness of drugs and alcohol.

It seems I wasn't the only sibling who traded one darkness for another.

Seldom do I venture out at night because it's not a comforting time, nor do I feel safe when I can't see what's there and has to be dealt with. I often don't answer my phone at night, and I refuse to answer the door unless the person calls me and tells me they are at the door. I want to control my environment, and that's the only way I know how to do that, all the while knowing that there is no control.

I want to be easily awake, to hear the unusual sounds and identify them, to check why my dog is barking ferociously, to know that if I feel threatened, I can take action to defend myself.

Somewhere, there is a hidden memory that knows why the night is difficult for me, but like so much of my youth, it remains locked away. I do not know if I would unlock it if I could because sometimes not knowing is the better pathway through life.