Fair Trade

I awoke early again, but was able to accomplish a deep sleep for nearly five hours. That’s triple the hours I slept over a span of forty-eight. Actually, I don't know if it's triple the hours. I tried counting but I suck at math. 

And I'm tired.

I suppose it’s okay to sometimes embrace insomnia. It won’t necessarily kill me to be up before the dawn. I used to do it all the time.

During my adolescence, I spent many nights tossing and turning – thinking about my siblings and my parents. For the most part, my parents got along, but inevitably they argued, sometimes quite vocally. Bickering sometimes erupted into insults that spewed through the air, landing hard on the surfaces around them. It was tough to sleep on the nights they had a blowout. Didn’t every child who heard their parents fighting fret about the marriage’s demise? I guess some people never heard their parents argue so fretting was over something stupid, like a boy. 

My point isn’t about my childhood. It’s about the reasons why we inadvertently lock ourselves inside insomnia’s cage.

In college, my schedule was erratic. In bed by midnight, up by 7 or 8, in classes; and then the power naps where I’d go back to the dorm or the apartment, lay on my back and shove my hands into my arm pits and fall asleep like a chicken tucking its wings. (It’s quite comfortable).

In law school, I spent a few all-nighters with the music blaring while I wrote legal briefs or research papers. I don’t even remember sleeping but I must have done it.

And then maturity and adult decisions. Where to live. Who to love. What to drive. What do for a living. What to do, period. If you marry and have children, the decisions you make include your spouse’s desires or your children’s needs, so consistent sleep is laughable.

Maturity does to sleep what infidelity does to a marriage. 

It fucks it all up.

I wanted to say it destroys or obliterates it but that’s not true. It devastates and damages it, but with help and sleeping pills (necessary for sleep or being crushed by your spouse’s behavior), you can overcome.

And I guess that’s my point. I’m running on about seven hours of sleep over a period of seventy-two hours (again, I suck at math), but for the second day in a row, I watched the sun rise over the waters in front of me. 

Trading some shut eye for that every once in a while is okay.

It’s better than okay. 

It’s dandy.