Years Without Sleep - Part I

Thanks for coming back to check out my blog! I've been writing stories for years. Some of them are romance, some are science fiction, a few are horror, but most are mysteries. Soon, an edition of them will appear called Seasons of Love: Family Confessions. I like to call this chapter, Years without Sleep. It's the story of Margie and her husband Dan. Additional segments will follow on Wednesdays each week. (Look for Seasons of Love on smashwords, later this summer. I'll keep you posted!)

For the fifteenth time in a two-minute period, I changed positions in the bed. I couldn’t get comfortable. I couldn’t fall asleep. Just about the time I would start to relax, some muscle in my leg would twitch and I would jerk again. I sat up and then eased out of bed.

My husband, Dan, on his side of the bed, slept peacefully, his soft breaths whooshing evenly in and out. I envied him the ability to sleep. Two years ago, I had thought I would start sleeping again once the youngest of our three kids, Tim, left for college. The house was quiet; I was no longer listening for doors closing at all hours of the night, or awakened by car stereos blaring out on the driveway. I had expected my life to become peaceful and my sleep patterns to normalize. But instead, I was in and out of bed seven or eight times every night, and if I slept, it was only a light doze that left me feeling I hadn’t slept at all.

“Marjorie, I hope you snap out of this before the merger next month,” Mr. Perkins, my supervisor, said one day at the office. I was making more mistakes than usual on the documents for which I was responsible. Often, I had to redo even the simplest letter.

“I’m trying, Mr. Perkins. Just having some trouble sleeping. I’ll get it under control.” Inside, I groaned. The merger. That’s all I’d been hearing for weeks, and the prospect of all those legal documents and the mounds of paperwork to be printed and then mailed to shareholders was what should be keeping me awake. But truthfully, I had no idea what prevented me from being able to relax. I was tired – I was exhausted. Yet night after night insomnia struck.

When Mr. Perkins left my cubicle, I slipped off to the coffee room for another cup and to find someone to commiserate with me. My friend Adele sat at the break table, eating a chocolate bar.

“What’s up, Margie? You look beat,” she said.

“I feel beat, but then, what’s new?” I said as I slid into the folding chair across the table from Adele.

“Still not sleeping, huh?”
I had been telling Adele for weeks how exhausted I felt.

“You need to exercise, girl. Gets that metabolism moving. And have some more coffee to perk you up!”

I reached for the coffee pot and filled my cup, adding sweetener and a packet of creamer. Adele shoved a candy bar across the table at me.

“And have some chocolate. Lots of anti-oxidants in it. Good for you. Energy, too.”

“You know I can’t resist chocolate. I’m already eating more than enough to anti-oxidize my body, whatever that means,” I said. I kept a regular stash of chocolate bars on the top shelf in the kitchen at home, just above the spices. I ate the candy bar and drank two cups of coffee with Adele. The fuzz gradually cleared from my brain. I felt better.

After that day, I developed a routine of de-fuzzing my brain every few hours by having a couple of cups of coffee and a candy bar. Then I’d stop by the gym on the way home to work off the sugar and try to kick up my metabolism. I wished I could kick it up to where it had been in my twenties, but I’d given up hope. I felt less tired at work with the coffee and chocolate routine, but my metabolism didn’t seem to be revving up. Worst of all, I still couldn’t sleep.

Later that week, my husband, Dan, sat down at the dinner table, took one look at my new version of “blackened” meat loaf, and took his plate to the kitchen.

“Can’t eat this, Margie,” he called over his shoulder. “Haven’t been able to eat much you’ve cooked for the past few months. Throw it away and let’s go out.” He stood in the kitchen doorway, scratching his head. “What’s up? You used to be a good cook.”

He was right. I did used to be a good cook, but now I couldn’t complete a meal without burning at least one of the dishes. Usually it was the bread, but other times, one of the veggies steamed itself dry in the saucepan or, like tonight, I’d leave the oven on just a little too hot or just a little too long. While I was cooking I’d pick up something to read, go through the day’s mail, or let my mind wander. Before I knew it, something was burnt. Dan didn’t look mad, but he wasn’t happy.

We went out for pizza.

“So what’s going on with you?” He asked as we finished eating. “This cooking thing, and the not sleeping. What do you think it is?”

Dan leaned over the table at the pizza parlor and put on his best listening face. As a junior high coach he was darn good at listening, but that didn’t mean he had the patience to deal with his own wife’s problems.

“I don’t know. I can’t sleep. I can’t concentrate. I lose track of time. I forget what I’m doing.” He clasped his hands together and let his thumbs fight with one another for a few seconds before he said in his deepest voice. “Classic symptoms of an infatuation. Are you having an affair?”

My fork clattered onto my plate. “What? Of course not! How could you even think . . .?” I pushed away from the table and rushed to the ladies’ room.

I stared at myself in the mirror. Had he really asked if I was having an affair? I stared at my reflection. Skin bagged beneath eyes bright from the half gallon of coffee I’d consumed today. My hair was slightly disheveled and longer than I usually wore it. My t-shirt fit snugly over my rounded breasts, maybe too tight for my age.

An affair? My husband was over the top on this one. And maybe I was overreacting. Had Dan been joking? Was I was so tired that I no longer recognized my own husband’s jokes?

“I won’t even bother to respond to that question, it’s so ridiculous,” I said when I got back to the table. I threw him a smile, but Dan did not return it. If he had been joking before, he wasn’t joking now. We ate the rest of the meal and drove home in silence.

At home, he carried his shaving kit into the extra bathroom, went into Tim’s room and shut the door.

Good, I told myself. Maybe that’s what my problem has been. His snoring. He’s been keeping me from sleeping. But I didn’t sleep any better that night than the previous night. I slept worse. Truthfully, I missed the even in and out whooshing of Dan’s breath, and the warmth of his body beside me.

The next day, Dan was gone to work by the time I came out of the bedroom. I hoped this was only a one night misunderstanding. Surely we’d discuss it the next evening and he’d be back in bed with me that night. But we didn’t discuss it and Dan didn’t come back to our bedroom, not that night or any night the following week. I still couldn’t sleep.

“Maybe you need one of those bedroom makeovers,” my best friend Jan suggested the next day. “You know, get a new color scheme, new sheets and a comforter, some big pillows. Put up some netting and light candles. Get a new mattress. A new mattress can make all the difference, both with sleep and with sex!”

“Really? Did you get a new mattress, Jan?”

She blushed. “Yeah, right after Casey turned three and we decided not to have another kid. It’s been eight years. Maybe we ought to buy another again!”

The bedroom makeover sounded like a good idea, and so I bought a new mattress, new sheets, pillows and a comforter. Then I hired someone to repaint the bedroom. In a week, the room looked entirely different.

When Dan got home that night, I insisted he come back to our bedroom. He peeked in the doorway then promptly went into Tim’s room and closed the door.

“Well, do you like it?” I asked, pounding on the door. “I did it for you. I surely will sleep better with the new mattress, and the light blue and cream color scheme is very restful.”

“If you have redecorated for your lover, I’m assuming you consulted with him first,” he said from the other side of the door. “You sure didn’t consult with me. I liked our bedroom the way it was.”

I pressed my forehead against the door panel and closed my eyes. It didn’t seem possible this was happening. Maybe this whole thing, the whole sleepless two years, was really just a bad dream. I wanted to wake up! But first, I wanted to sleep!
TO BE CONTINUED . . .