Perchance to Dream

Sleeping is one of those activities where my body and my brain are at odds.

If my body had its way, I'd get seven hours of shuteye every night. I have no trouble falling asleep...I often comment that I could fall asleep on a bag of rocks. Not the behavior of a night owl. But then, somewhere around 5am, I usually have to hurl myself out of the rack to make a bathroom stop. When I return to the comfort of my bed, there's a click -- my brain begins to kick in. Joining in are an assortment of fears, concerns, to-dos for the day, and other noise that build into a crescendo until I'm unable to tumble back into the Land of Nod.

So, there I am, an hour or so from waking for the day, and my brain will not let me rest. Sometimes I can fool it by trying to retrieve from my memory banks what it was I was dreaming about before I was so rudely interrupted by my bladder. By engaging in this exercise, my brain is tricked back into slumber. The trouble is, this tactic doesn't always work, and I give up and arise for good at my usual time, feeling cheated of much-needed rest.

My husband is my opposite. He is a night owl. Although he will say how tired he is in the evening, by the time my bedtime rolls around, he is wide awake, often not conking out until the sun has nearly made its reappearance. He has done some of his best research at 2 a.m. This is frustrating for him, especially on the weekends, when he sleeps through a good chunk of the morning and our time together.

Then there are the dreams. No one can really escape what's going on inside their head. On nights when I am so exhausted it is an effort to breathe, I will often begin to dream about work, and proceed to labor through a series of tedious exercises all night long. There are a lot of theories about why we dream and what our dreams mean. I figure dreams are a personal thing, tailored to our experiences. Sometimes they are just a series of meaningless episodes, strung together like a bad movie, replayed in our heads before being discarded.

I seldom remember my jaunts through other-consciousness. I know there are techniques for remembering them. Perhaps there's some benefit in this, but quite frankly, the dreams I do remember are pretty lame. And they don't help me sort out my awake self at all.

There are times when I wonder if our sleeping lives are just as real as our awake lives. Maybe it's a parallel universe kind of thing.

Maybe I just need a little more sleep.