Sleep.

The other day I was not feeling well. I was tired. The kind of tired that is mind numbing. I drifted from place to place in a grey, wet fog. I attempted simple tasks randomly over and over again. I was unlucky, clumsy, vague.

I won’t go into detail. Except to say there was plenty of glass. Teeny tiny shards spread all over the bamboo floor. There was also an unusual amount of loud swearing. This silvery glass incident was the straw that broke the camels back. A lot of camels were broken and I was a heartbeat away from silent sobbing.

When I thought I had scraped up all the microscopic shiny needles I decided to call it quits. I wasn’t going to do another thing. I most definitely wanted to curl up into a small and messy ball. I seriously needed some quality sleep.

Several years ago I had a sleep test. Dave was complaining over and over again about my snoring in his ear. He offhandedly said something about me not breathing. I decided it was time to submit my body to science. It was going to be a night in a swish private hospital.

There I lay, on my back with only a thin hard plastic mattress and little else. I was unable, forbidden to move. Not even for a bursting bladder. The dozen or so patches I wore were nothing to worry about. The fact I was attached to the latest and greatest in electrical wizadry was nothing to be scared of. Merely a small inconvenience. Not, I was told, very different from my own bed. The queasy feeling of sleeping in a morgue was fanciful. All I had to do was relax.

This night of private torture confirmed the observations of my soundly sleeping partner. I did stop breathing.  That night I forgot to take a breath for an astonishing seventy two times a minute. I was shocked! Afterwards in the “sleep doctors” rooms I was handed a new and unfamiliar label. Continuous Chronic Sleep Apnoea. The diagnosis was not a good one. Worse was to come.

After handing over a hefty sum of money I was soon the proud owner of the latest in twentieth century sleeping technology. A split second later I realised I was going to have to attach myself to this contraption, every time I slept. The mask I wore looked and sounded like Darth Vader. The struggles I had battling with this plastic octopus was as close as one can get to snorkeling without water. It was an unromantic addition to the bedroom.

Only recently I decided enough was enough. I was well and truly over night time juggling. The mask was no longer popular. I slept guiltily, without mask, for several days. A number of different reasons I concocted to justify the decision to ditch the mask. The main one, winning hands down was…I hate this stupid mask!

Now here I am suffering self inflicted sleep deprivation. I was totally clueless. Why had my rational thinking seeped away? Why was I sitting doing a whole lot of nothing.