When my husband met me seven years ago I could sleep like it was my job. In our early dating days he knew not to call me before 11:00 in the morning on weekends. He would suggest how romantic it would be to come get me at 5am and we could watch the sun come up together. Before long he realized he had a better shot with Ernest Hemingway for whom we all know the sun also rises.
When women in my age group (early forties to early fifties) get together the first thing one of them says is, “Anyone sleeping?” and the second thing is, “No, me neither.” As far as the hormonal changes that occur at this time in a woman’s life, hot flashes and mood swings get all the press. But for the actual women it’s the sleep thing. It’s as if a basic feature has been deleted from our program and turned against us, as if chocolate suddenly made you hurl. This is the club I now belong to and we are united in our zombiedom. I don’t know if the guys with erectile dysfunction feel this same kinship but I do know we’re all getting their junk emails.
Please save me. This is what I pleaded when I met with my doctor two years ago. He’s a wonderful and responsive practitioner who also happens to be an Orthodox Jew who has given me many annual, thorough physicals without ever once seeing me naked. Don’t ask me how this is possible just believe that it’s true. Forget about needing a nurse present in the room. He answers to a higher authority. In response to my misery, what he saved me with was Ambien proving once again that where human beings struggle pharmaceutical companies soar.
The Ambien worked well for many nights and then it started to lag. A friend suggested trying the Ambien CR Extended Release tabs. But it seemed to me like hmmm, should I take the LSD or the maximum strength LSD? I mean how far into the earth’s core do you need to descend? (This is a purely speculative analogy on my part having never, ever dropped acid and I swear that on Timothy Leary’s grave. My kids read this blog.) I asked my doctor if he would prescribe some Lunesta for me since I liked the friendly butterfly on the TV commercial but he said he’d rather I try Rozerem. So instead of soft butterflies I got crazy monkeys.
This is what happened last night: I took the Rozerem 30 minutes before bedtime as prescribed. This would be right after the Season Encore of The Closer, not to be confused with one of TNT’s Instant Classics, a movie released six months ago and coming up on its fiftieth TNT showing, Instant Classic being my least favorite modern catchphrase after Starter Marriage.
Fairly soon I began to drift into what felt like an anesthetized state like when the doctor taking your wisdom teeth out or giving you a colonoscopy says to count backwards from ten and your face feels like liquid at nine. Except I didn’t actually sleep, I just had these episodic nightmares, let’s call them fugues because why not? In the first one I was running on a street in what seemed like my neighborhood except a car was bearing down on me from behind and I wasn’t so much running as slogging through oatmeal in weighted shoes. I could see the headlights illuminating the road in front of me and I could feel the blood pounding in my ears as the car got closer and my feet heavier. Terrified, I bolted upright in bed. But I still felt groggy so I lay back down. Next I was walking toward my front door when I looked up and caught the reflection of a stranger coming up behind me holding a rock with both hands aimed at my head. Now I shot awake and jumped out of bed. My legs felt wobbly, my hands were tingling and I reached into my parched mouth to pull out the wool sock only to discover it was my tongue. Shit, I thought, I need water so I staggered into the bathroom and nearly chipped my tooth on the faucet because God forbid I could find the cup in the dark and if I turned the lights on I would see the snakes in my hair. Shit shit shit shit shit.
I grabbed the bottle of pills and lurched down the steps to the kitchen garbage where I fished out that information sheet CVS sends along with its prescriptions, the one with the scary warnings that I never read because we all have to die of something, right? I was looking for the section where it goes can cause dizziness, headache, constipation, psychotic breaks but all the words just ran together so I opened the bottle and poured those little monsters into the garbage on top of the Trader Joe coffee grounds so I couldn’t change my mind later thinking maybe they weren’t so bad. Then I sat down and wrote this entry because it’s the middle of the night and do all you children know where your mothers are?