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Luckily, insomnia is not the problem it once was for me and when I have a bad night or so now, it makes little difference since I no longer have to drag a sleep-deprived body to work.
For a large part of my life I had trouble sleeping, but apparently not always as I remember not infrequently waking up screaming from bad dreams. Usually I was being assaulted or trying to run away on legs that didn’t work.
Sometimes I had dreams about aeroplanes that were crashing, though I was a witness, not a passenger. Those dreams didn’t wake me but they did disturb me. Working in an airport those dreams were understandable.
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Insomnia punctuated by episodes of parasomnia mostly left me when I retired and became a recluse.
Until fairly recently I had not woken screaming for years, so it was a surprise when it began happening again, but I realised why it was that I felt I was being assaulted, why my legs would not move.
Blackie had begun sleeping with me again. She sleeps very close and she is very solid. She does not stir when I try to turn over.
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“OMG is that a kitten?”
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After Lucy died last year, Willow also began sleeping on my bed, right by my feet. I am thrilled to have her there and I angle my legs diagonally across the bed, so that when I am not pinned down by Blackie, I can move without disturbing my girl.
We create our own problems when we allow animal companions to sleep with us. Many years and many cats ago, I awoke one morning with a strange feeling in my eye and was alarmed, when I inspected it, to perceive what appeared to be a golf ball where my eyeball should be.
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It can happen if you get a cat hair in the eye, if you happen to be allergic to it.
At the time of this event I was working a midnight shift which gave me serious insomnia, but the emergency room doctor gave me a wonderful medication that laid me out for 12 hours straight, while my eye returned to its normal shape.
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Regrettably, at 3 o’clock this morning the girls were rudely awaken by screams of “HELP!” that I cannot in any way account for, the dream being of a situation that would never have occurred.
It featured a small gathering of long-dead relatives who I had brought together for some unknown purpose that I apparently hoped to celebrate with a large cake which I asked my father to help serve, all of which was not going well but that was not the cause of distress.
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The house, which I did not recognise, had two large fireplaces that I had set a match to. Although there were not yet flames in evidence, I was suddenly certain that there would be a conflagration and apparently too cowardly to deal with a non-fire, I yelled for HELP!
The cats fled, so at least when I awoke, grumpily, I was able to turn over and get up for a walk and a glass of water.
Still, 3 am is not so bad since there is enough time for a reasonable doze, unlike 5 o’clock at which hour I lie there thinking I ought really to get up and wait for sunrise, only to drop off at about 5 minutes before the downstairs mob announces: “BREAKFAST!” and that gets me off to a slow start, though come to think of it, that is what happened this morning…
The disturbing reality of disturbing dreams.
I know what you mean.
During my years of having dog and cat companions, I never allowed any of them to sleep on the bed. I might well have relented where Ollie was concerned, but he never showed any desire to get on a bed with us. Just as well, as his snoring sounded like a noisy motorcycle!
Best wishes, Pete.
I can’t say that I have trouble sleeping and I rarely get nightmares, but if this happens, I immediately get up and make a warm glass of milk with cinnamon or Rooibos tea with honey (I sometimes drink it before bed and believe it helps for a good night’s sleep). Oh, I know the feeling of “not enough space on the bed” … we bought a queen size bed when we had the two spaniels and they thought it was their bed – we had to plan our sleeping positions around them.
I’m glad that no animals were harmed during the writing of this post!