When I started taking Klonopin two years ago, and you may well remember my near-breakdown from lack of sleep for so, so long, the thing that helped me recognize the ADD, but, more important, made me get some damn sleep, I really needed it.
I don't think I need it so much anymore. Well, I don't care whether I do. I've decided to remove it from my schedule. It's difficult to wean myself from; for two years, I have leaned on it, relied on it, to help me sleep when I simply couldn't believe I'd get through the night without at least one unbearable two-hour-stretch of ceiling-staring and thought-spinning, the maddening kind, the kind where one long sentence uncoils itself from inside the pitch-covered recesses of my charred skull and rises up over me, unbroken, while I stare at its bleached length, horror and fascinating beauty braided together, fine, an indiscernible bind, the sheer endlessness itself the most terrifying portion, feeling at once like a knot tightening about my throat and also like floating in death-like bliss, the softest couch, downy and embracing, stretching and stretching and uncoiling and comforting and frightening, on and on.
I've decided I can face it. That I don't need to worry anymore; that my body has unlearnt the habit of wakefulness in the midst of hearty, working, productive, successful sleep. I started believing firmly that I could sleep on my own, successfully, a few weeks, maybe three or four weeks, ago. Or, wait, it may have been longer, but only a little. Maybe six weeks. I suppose it was still late summer, so, yes. Six weeks. Something. At first it was tough. My heart would begin thumping a loud beat against the bed, leaning out of my chest and into the mattress pad, right through its cage, so loud, so irregular, so discomfiting. I would feel sleepy but that heart beat would jolt all through me, electric, sonic, distorted but so LOUD, and my sleepy feeling would slip off, ashamed of itself for daring to compete with its master and that giant beat. But I fought it. Fought with it. Sleepy may have deserted me but my mind was damned if it wouldn't win out over the threat of heartbeat wreaking nighttime havoc. And I kept it quiet, my mind, I shushed it repeatedly. I insisted. Stood my ground. Sleepy would peer around a soft-shrouded corner, a tapestry of webbing ensconced on its brow, and I would nod, and it would steal toward me, and I would embrace it and then we lay together, fingers intertwined, as heartbeat, simply ignored, gave up and settled itself, too, its fingers reaching up, up, through my throat and into my head where Sleepy and I cradled one another, touching us gently.
As I showered today I realized that my dreams, they're coming back. And that my dreams, I told myself, unsteadily dragging the razor over one aging-skinned shin, are the life-blood of my creativity. If I am not dreaming, then I am not very much alive.
My dreams are inviting themselves back now that the Klonopin is out of the picture. I would open my arms like a cape to them but I don't know just how to do it without interfering, so I shall simply be glad of their return and won't force the issue.
But maybe I'll write more, now and then, and maybe sometimes I'll write some honest things here, even though my sister-in-law reads my blog regularly, something I found out this year, something that made me terribly reticent to write here, given our non-relational status otherwise. I don't feel good knowing that someone who is closely related to me doesn't want to talk to me, but *does* want to peer into my thoughts. It stings. But I am going to try to not let that be a daunting thing, and I'm not going to defend my right to say these things, here, even as this is a live broadcast of my head's entrails to the universe, that the portal of the interworld makes it ridiculous to defend oneself against certain people dropping in, because I've implicitly provided anyone and everyone a key to do so, free of charge, because it still doesn't seem right, and I'm allowed to say that and to feel it, too, and so I shall.
There. Jack and I have to go to the toy store, now, to buy birthday gifts for his two best friends, whose birthdays are both in late October, and then we're going to buy some Halloween-colored sprinkles and bake cookies to put the sprinkles on. And today is Friday, which means it's Friday Family Fun Night!, something we made up a few months ago and it's now a permanent fixture on the weekly agenda because Jack freaking loves it so. So, hooray! Because tomorrow! is! Halloween! Could there be anything better? Halloween? For a 4+ year old? Who will be Batman? Nah. There couldn't.
Well, except there's Christmas/Chanukah coming. So that's pretty good, too. But his focus on Halloween is a thing of beauty, his lack of distraction by the other holidays that loom, the ones for ME that loom all too near all too real, all too requiring of planning and such.
I'm gonna adopt his attitude for today, though. Since I only have Fridays with him now, and I'm altogether too grumpy and bossy most of the time.
Adios! Happy Halloween! Happy Friday Family Fun Night!
!!!! (Can you believe me with alla these exclamation points? It's fucking insane. !!!)
Your dreams are coming back?
That's so wonderful -- for you, for us.
Posted by: slouchy | October 30, 2009 at 12:46 PM