What kind of relationship do you have with the concept of ‘bedtime’? Mine has been complicated. Part of the complication stems from the fact that I’ve always felt like time spent asleep is wasted time. I know sleep is good for me, but I don’t get to think and do fun stuff when I’m asleep, so I tend to avoid it. It’s not that it’s hard for me to go to sleep, as a rule. I can usually drop off within five minutes, but I hate to give up that many hours of my life.
I used to want to stay awake until 1, 2, 3—even 4am or later on a weekend, sometimes. And Kellie LOVED sleep. But we never really understood the phenomenon of couples with different bedtimes. She could never get enough hours of sleep, whereas I’m pretty happy with six hours. So how did that play out in our relationship? Well, Kellie stayed awake for me. It wasn’t fair, but that was her preference. When she couldn’t manage any longer, she’d fall asleep next to me and then when I finally got around to it, I’d wake her up and we’d go to bed together.
That worked for us for many, many years. I would keep us up way too late, and she would humor me. I’d feel guilty about it, for sure. I didn’t feel like it was fair for me to dictate our bedtimes to the extent that I always did, but ultimately that was our rhythm.
My relationship with sleep has now changed dramatically for the first time in my adult life, and that feels really strange to me.
I no longer feel the need to stay awake in order to wring every drop of enjoyment out of my day, for one thing. That’s probably partially because of getting up so early (Coco got me up at 5:15 yesterday and 6:15 today). So I have an extra 3+ hours of living in the early morning that I’ve never had before. That means I’m fine with going to bed two or three hours earlier, since I’m still getting the same amount of time in my day.
Another thing is that I don’t have any kind of pressure from Kellie or anyone else to nudge me in the direction of caring about someone else’s sleep needs. The dogs sleep whenever they feel like it, after all. So when I’m tired, I get up and go to bed. That’s a good thing and also a really sad thing.
I saw a post from a widower today talking about how he never used to want to go to bed because it felt like his life was so busy and like there were so many demands on his time, but that now he’s alone he realizes that those demands on his time were fullness and companionship, and now he regrets that prior perspective. I feel like I’m in the same boat as he is. No, I didn’t get upset at Kellie for having had different needs than me (usually), but now that I’m on my own I wish there was someone else’s needs that I needed to take into consideration. Does that make sense?
When it’s late at night, I still have that deep ache of isolation that I had to handle when I was fresh to this new life. That was always the worst block of time for me to get through in the first few months after Kellie’s death, if you recall. I would sit and stare at the wall and think (or cry) for a few hours every night. It sucked. Back then, I had a few friends who would check in late at night, and that helped so much. That’s mostly dropped off, but then, I have been able to mostly keep myself busy until I get tired and then go to bed. So it’s not as much of an issue for me as it was.
That said, it’s still tough to stay up very late, which is maybe one reason why I go to bed earlier than I used to (we tend to avoid things that don’t feel good to us, after all). Maybe I’d be just as sad late at night if I wasn’t in bed asleep during that time? Who knows!
This morning was a really productive time for me. I got all packed up for the DC trip, washed and dried all my dirty laundry, folded the old load of laundry I had been avoiding, took my meds and showered, and picked up the house a bit. And all of that only took me until 8am or so! How strange and novel that still feels.
That left me plenty of time to get work done, eat breakfast in the park, read a book and listen to some great music before a very busy work day.
I’m excited for my trip this weekend and feeling pretty good in general, which is in and of itself pretty momentous, especially given the fact that I was in the middle of my bad three days at this time last week. Progress is progress, right?
I headed to Conneaut for great pizza and then spent most of the evening working on a paper (so I only have to get one more written when I get back from DC).
I hope you have an incredible weekend. I hope I do, too. In fact, I hope the entire world has a good weekend. Let’s all do our best to make that happen.
XOXO,
Matt