Disturbances of Sleep (Chapter Nine)
“They’ve promised that dreams can come true but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.”
“So what brings you in today?”
For a moment, you were lost in your surroundings, silently staring into the distance. In that time, you dream of angels, too many to count, surrounding you with love, too enchanting to withstand. You long to lay down and be enveloped by the warmth of a light that comes from within, a light more pure than gold. It is a blissful reprieve from a burdensome world, a mind freely wandering, scaling the deep valleys and soaring summits of boundless imagination. You wish to drift into a heavenly sleep as a white-winged dove settles upon a grey and fading earth. It was a dream that was so magical, so incredible, so perfect.
But not all the world is beautiful, and not all of life is fair. As the last rays of the sun fell slanting through a window, the night heralds torment that must be endured rather than rest to be cherished. Solitude and sleep are now only signals to summon the darkness. There is no white-winged dove folding its wings in peace. The only sign of life upon the setting is a vulture circling above, patiently watching the life force ebb from your restless body. As the bird commences its descent, the same descent the angels from heaven had intended to cradle you with love, your heart pounds, breath quickens, and mind startles awake.
“I can’t sleep.”
Can’t fall asleep?
The mountains are silhouettes against a midnight sky and the forest, wet with evening dew, glistens in the light of the silver moon. This is the image your nightingale eyes capture while melodiously twittering perched upon a treetop. Mindfully searching for prey, watchfully waiting for signs of life, a worm emerges from the underbrush blanketing the forest floor. Lifting your wings and flinging your claws, you swoop down and pounce with passion on the unsuspecting, wiggling worm.
“Get off me!” your bedmate screams in confusion to being awoken at an ungodly time.
The sympathetic nervous system permits you to fight or flight in response to a threat. It makes sense the sympathetic nervous system is less active during sleep unless, as in your case, it senses danger. The unseen hand of diminutive jaws suffocates you in sleep. The arousals, the countless arousals, each one tied to a surge in adrenaline that raises your heart rate and blood pressure, rev up the sympathetic nervous system, preparing you for a fight you did not seek.
Instead of time to rest and digest, sleep becomes a matter of survival. Unable to wind down and restore, the body and mind are distressed. You carry this burden through the night and into the day, never aware of how it all began.
You are a nightingale that shudders and folds its wings when the sun sets, always too soon, anxiously waiting until the night is done.
Can’t stay asleep?
9:00 p.m. Read
11:00 p.m. Zzzzz
1:00 a.m. Watch TV
3:00 a.m. Zzzzz
5:00 a.m. Clean the pipes or double-click the mouse
7:00 a.m. Zzzzz
Arousals required to restore the patency of a narrow airway can lead to awakenings.
Are you hot?
It's as if you are sleeping with a dragon. The heat licks your face and coils around your body. While hell breath fills your lungs, razor-sharp talons pierce your skin as liquid fire flows into your arteries and swirls in your brain.
Well, this is a bit uncomfortable.
Saving yourself from hellfire, you kick off the covers, hop out of bed, open the window and turn on the fan. Miraculously, the cool air helps you, in time, to sleep. Kudos. You have caught the tail of the dragon by a stealth hand and spun it mercilessly into the darkness.
But the work of the great bird was not finished.
Rising like a Phoenix from the ashes, with its impenitent heart, fiery scales, and crimson blood, the dragon descends on your defenseless body. Sleep is a battle after battle, a war, until you awaken in darkness, dripping with sweat, and the shirt on your back soaked as if displaying a map of a distant land.
By morning, the hot sweat on your forehead seems suddenly cold. There is no memory of the great fight, and all that lies at the bedside is a pile of soiled clothes.
The detrimental effects of mouth breathing deflate your face and forever diminish your airway capacity, especially during sleep. Being suffocated is awful. The Herculean effort it takes to breathe while your skin and bones smother you is enough to leave you shirtless.
Are you restless?
The bed is your nemesis, but it hadn’t always been that way. As a baby, you drifted to sleep cradled in your mother’s arms, gently rocking to and fro. You slept in absolute stillness, not a sound. Even the exhale of your breath seemed to fade away.
That was then. The times have changed as you have become older, and your body has changed. Sleep no longer comes easily. The mind is murky like the gathering clouds of a coming storm that promises nothing but hardship. When it comes, when sleep arrives, it arrives like a towering twister. Eerily beautiful with its deafening sound, ferocious winds, walls of water, and brilliant lightning, the whirlwind vanishes as quickly as it arrives, leaving behind a wake of destruction.
Was it just a dream?
The skies are empty now. There are no telltale scars to be found among the clouds. Time and dawn have swept away every memory of what was perhaps your great inner storm.
If you care to look, a few signposts of the tempest remain: sheets disheveled, blankets twisted, and pillows in disarray. Familiar landmarks are out of reach from awakening sleeping sideways. Peeved partners and pets have taken refuge at the bed edge. Yet the tossing and turning, jerking and kicking felt by others are fleeting memories, if any at all, for you.
Be not concerned with the amnesia or the fury of a bedmate. Be concerned that an ephemeral arousal from a cinched airway underlies every jerk, kick, and movement.
Need to pee?
You have a master. It lurks in the shadows of day and emerges from the darkness of night when it preys on your slumbering body. There is nothing physical about the abuse it inflicts, but it shatters you nonetheless.
But fear is a prelude to bravery. You break free from the chains of bondage and rise to face your captor, only to realize the subjugation comes from within.
Meet your master…bladder.
This would be a great horror movie if you didn’t have the starring role. The pleas to pee infiltrate the mind, body, and sleep. Try as you can to ignore them, you cannot flee the need to pee.
Why? Through a series of physiologic effects, mouth breathing can lead to too much atrial natriuretic peptide and too little antidiuretic hormone. Basically, you’re making too much pee that you can’t hold.
Do you have cold hands and feet?
It was a hot night, and that was the irony of having cold hands and feet. The coldness seeps through the woolly fibers of mittens and socks with ridiculous ease. Removing them lays bare skin numb to touch. Warming your icy fingers and toes against a warm and toasty back, such an enchanting proposition, but it is one denied by your bedmate cocooned at the bed’s edge.
“Cold hands, warm heart,” mom used to tell you. It is a curious saying. It proposes on a superficial level that blood flees from the hands and flows to the heart. In time you have come to understand a deeper meaning of the adage. With relationships soured and promotions passed over, a gruff and impetuous exterior has masked a loving and kind soul.
This is the way it has always been, and this is the way it will always be. Perhaps not. Perhaps all the memories of fearful bedmates, lovers lost, and bosses unnerved can be relegated to the past, leaving the future free to live, love, learn, and create a legacy. Perhaps reducing the adrenaline surges that constrict the most diminutive blood vessels will bring the grand warmth back into your hands and feet and, surprisingly, into your everyday interactions with people.
Do you grind your teeth?
The Beast
You have met the beast.
It snarls and growls and licks its teeth.
It looks you in the eye and tells you of the fate you will meet.
You turn to run, but you cannot stride.
You try to escape, but you cannot hide.
From the fearsome beast who lives inside.
The best smiles with glee…ha…ha…ha…as you lose you pee.
And while the razor-sharp claws pin you in bed,
the powerful jaws devour your head.
All you can do is mumble,
as its teeth chomp and crack and crumble.
You have met the beast…and the beast is you.
It feels so real as you frantically awaken and check to ensure your teeth aren’t loose.
Clenching and grinding teeth during sleep and awakening with headaches and jaw pain is a conundrum. The good doctor underscores the ills of caffeine and alcohol. The therapist calms your mind and frees it from thoughts. The dentist fabricates a mouth guard.
Nothing works.
There is a simple reason why nothing works and why nothing should work. The gnawing and gnashing of teeth during sleep protect you. Recall, clenching and grinding teeth tenses the tongue, opening the airway so you can breathe. Necessarily, the body sacrifices teeth for the vital function of breathing.
Every night you enter the ring. It is an epic fight for survival. Every night you come out a winner, toothless and all.
Do you have heartburn?
Hellburn
The glow above your head is a halo, and the bruises on your knees are from praying.
The dark circles around your eyes are from sinning, and the burning in your chest is repentance.
The fire in your breath is from the devil, and. the acid in your stomach is his wine.
You don’t need an exorcism. You merely have a bad case of heartburn.
Heartache and heartburn are your bedmates. Night after night, the column of your core burns, leaving a bitter mouth taste. Changing your diet, avoiding evening snacks, ending nightcaps, losing weight, or sleeping on your side and even upright has done what it has always done - absolutely nothing.
Mouth breathing collapses the bones of your face and bottlenecks your airway. Inhaling air through a straw with a kink requires a hard suck. It’s the giant suction pressure that pulls the acid in your stomach up your esophagus and into your throat when you sleep at night.
Yum.
Do you snore?
“You snore!”
“I do no such thing.”
“You shake the bed like a herd of buffalo.”
“How dare you! You are sleeping on the couch tonight!”
“Trust me, baby. It will be my pleasure.”
And the chasm in your relationship forms. Amidst the cacophony of noise and struggle to live and breathe lies the greatest casualty, the loss of human touch. That essential bit of physical affection, as simple as a gentle caress of the neck or entwining of the limbs, lends comfort, kindness, and love. Snoring causes arousals. Snoring takes effort. Yet the highest toll may not be physical but an emotional rift that becomes deeper, wider, and darker with each passing night.
Chapter Nine Conclusion