How I Fail at Falling Asleep

by Sharon Kayne

I was lying in bed the other night when I started wondering why it can be so gosh-darn difficult to fall asleep. At this point in my life, sleep is my only reason for being in bed. I don’t go there to eat, read, or (sadly) do anything even remotely exciting. And yet, far too often, when I lie down in the dark for the sole purpose of falling asleep, I find myself completely thwarted.

I rarely go to bed before 10pm. More often it’s closer to 11pm. Still, I’ll usually toss and turn for an hour or more before my brain shuts the hell up and lets me rest. Sometimes, I’m awake until 2am. When I’m having extreme trouble falling asleep, I’ll get up and play stupid games on my tablet (but no games that have a bright, white background, because I’m not an idiot) until I can hardly keep my eyes open. Then, I’ll go back to bed and sometimes still have trouble falling asleep.

That’s because when I’m in bed, my thoughts don’t just wander. They march, sometimes with military precision, through the minutia of my life. I can’t even give you a good example of the types of thoughts that keep my brain too active to sleep. They’re not even important enough to remember so I can dwell on them during the day instead. It’s more like my brain has decided that, when I lie down at night, it’s the perfect time to perk up and ruminate on crap I can’t actually do anything about at the moment. That’s assuming the crap is even important enough to do anything about at any other time.

Of course, before I retired, a lot of my bedtime rumination was on my job. What I did (or forgot to do) that day. What I need to do the next day. What, if anything, I could possibly do about the people at work who annoy me. Naturally, I assumed I would retire that habit once I quit working. I did not. The biggest sleep change brought about by retirement is that I rarely have to get up at a specific time in the morning. But that’s led to a whole new problem.

I love to sleep in, and, due to retirement, I’ve taken it to a new level. I’ll sleep in until 10am some days. It’s great in that it allows me to get in a good eight hours of sleep, but there’s a tradeoff. The later I sleep in, the later I am awake—tossing, turning and ruminating—the next night.

I’d call it a vicious cycle, but I find that term hyperbolic. I mean, really, how many cycles are truly vicious? Perhaps, if a dog were attacking me, causing me to fight back, and if my flaying about in self-defense angered the dog, causing it to attack even more energetically—I’d call that a vicious cycle. But I digress.

I know I should try meditation, but I have trouble focusing enough to do it effectively. My doctor has prescribed several sleeping pills, none of which have worked. I sometimes take melatonin, which helps, but not consistently. I’ve cut my daily caffeine intake down to one 7.5 ounce can of diet Coke (first thing in the morning), I try not to nap too often or after 2pm, and I do a half hour of brisk walking on the treadmill daily. The most effective sleep aid I’ve found is cannabis gummies. They don’t always help me fall asleep, but at least I’m too stoned to care.

Once I get to sleep, I’m just fine. I sleep through all the annoying things my cats do during the night (like puke) and I snore through their morning antics to wake my husband so he’ll feed them. Before my husband retired, when he went to work at the ungodly hour of 6am, he had to wake me up to say goodbye. I never had trouble falling back to sleep. And sometimes, I’d be so far out, he’d give up trying to wake me.

I know some people who can fall asleep easily, even under less-than-optimal circumstances. I’ve personally witnessed my sister falling asleep while sitting up and holding a book—twice! And my husband rarely has trouble falling asleep, even if he hits the hay at 8pm.

Interestingly, I generally fall asleep easily when I travel, even though I’m sleeping in an unfamiliar bed. It’s not that I’m relaxed because I’m on vacation, however. It’s because I find travel so stressful. I worry constantly when I travel. I worry that whatever conveyance I’m traveling in will fall out of the sky or careen off the highway. I worry about how difficult it will be to get around when I get wherever it is I’m going. And I worry that my house sitter will get hit by a bus and my cats will starve. Apparently, all of that worry tires me right to sleep.

It sort of makes me wonder if I could stress myself into an easier time falling asleep at home. I could try worrying about it, but I’m guessing that would keep me up at night.

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Buy my historical romances, This Restless Sea, The Green Silk Gown, and Variations on a Romance, at Amazon.