Whenever I take a day off from work in the middle of the week -- whether to run errands, spend a day with my niece or nephew, volunteer, whatever random reason it might be -- I'm always surprised by the number of people who are out and about as well. Who are all these people, running amuck during the middle of a business day? What sort of lifestyle do that they have that allow them the freedom of being outside of an office on a week day?

Sometimes they're college kids from UMKC, KU Med, or one of the area community colleges, studying or enjoying their free time between classes or part-time jobs. With a twinge of nostalgia, I miss those days of youthful worries. Worrying about studying, writing a paper, taking an exam, collecting quarters to do my laundry, my job as an RA...it all seem so simple compared to the life of adulthood: work, bills, family, adult relationships. 

In conversations reminiscing about our youth, so many people say that they wish they could go back to their high school days. Not me...take me back to college, the days of spending countless hours with my friends in Iowa City where we did random things like binge watch Pride and Prejudice (back before "binge watch" was even a phrase) after dinner; went to the bars on the weekends to drink and dance; stayed up until the late hours of the night debating philosophy and planning our futures; riding the Cambus to part-time jobs. "Stick it to me Tuesday" became not just a cheap way to eat Pokey Sticks dipped in ranch, but a way of life.

However, I wouldn't change my life today. Would I go back to college? Maybe, on some of those stressful days at work where projects and issues seem to be converging all at once. Yet, in some ways, as a divorced, middle-aged woman, I'm reliving my college days...just, you know, with more responsibilities. I still meet my friends for dinner and then debate the meaning of life and where our futures are headed, we still drink on the weekends. It's just now our evenings end earlier, our drinks might be more than the 2-for-1 nonbrand house specials, and dancing requires a full body massage the next day. While we might have to plan a little more in advance to go to a movie or get everyone together, it still happens. No, I wouldn't go back to a previous time, as much as I loved those years and friendships at that time. 

I just need to figure out how to get back to those mid-week days of being out-and-about without being on PTO and still fully employed...

Zzzzzzz...Nope

When I was a kid, I could sleep like no other. My parents said that I fell asleep quickly and in strange locations, that it was not unusual to find me asleep on the stairs or on the toilet, as if I gave up in the middle of whatever activity I was in and let sleep overcome me. Putting me in a moving vehicle immediately equated to me falling asleep. On the flip side, trying to wake me up was like trying to awake a hibernating bear: difficult and dangerous to do. 

To this day, a moving vehicle immediately puts me to sleep, and I'm grumpy and groggy after waking up. Yet when I was a teenager, it all changed. Somewhere along the line, I lost my ability to easily fall asleep and stay asleep. I found myself going through bouts of insomnia, unable to sleep throughout the night. Instead, I found myself lying awake at night. Worse yet were the nights where I was so uncomfortable that I had to get out of bed, feeling so out of control that the only thing that made me feel better was to clean. My mom said she missed when I moved out of my parents' house because those sleepless nights meant that she would wake to a dusted house, kitchen cupboards reorganized and straightened, and laundry folded.

My insomnia runs in phases as an adult. Usually it's just a week at a time during a stressful week, which is common for most people, but it can ranges for months at a time. It hasn't been this bad since the last year of my marriage, as the stress of a failing relationship and dealing with the death of a parent overwhelmed me to the point that I couldn't sleep due to fear of what was happening while I was asleep. However, in the last five months, my inability to sleep has progressively gotten worse where I've only slept three to four hours each night, finding myself waking up every hour or two and staying awake for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or two. Yet now I'm too exhausted to get out of bed to clean as a coping mechanism like I did as a teenager, so I feel like I'm wasting my time as I lay in bed, trying to count numbers backward to get myself back to sleep.

Frustrated, I've tried all the things that everyone recommends doing (or not doing) before bedtime: no caffeine, no electronics, using the bed for mainly sleep (or bed-specific activities), therapy, taking melatonin, exercising, getting out of bed until I feel sleepy, and so on. I reached the point of exhaustion so many times that I found myself needing sleep desperately, so I reached out to my doctor for prescription sleeping pills for the first time, just to break the cycle of not being able to sleep. I also bought a blackout shade for my room. Between the sleeping pills and blackout shade, it finally seems to have done the trick. 

I miss those days of my youth where I could flop down and immediately be asleep and stay asleep. It's the roving adult mind of mine that lets the stress and frustration of the day creep in every night, like a monster lurking underneath the bed that has finally figured out the best way to pounce on me. Thoughts of work, finances, health, current relationships, dead loved ones, loneliness, the future, and the frustration of not sleeping all flow into my mind as I'm trying to fall asleep. It's a tidal wave of thoughts and feelings that I've dealt with previously that I just can't seem to shake right now, a melodrama of my own making.

But something shifted last night: I had the first good sleep I've had in months. Perhaps it was the combination of the sleeping pills, blackout shade, exhaustion, and finally shutting my mind and emotions off that allowed it. Even knowing that I was losing an hour of time due to daylight saving time, I allowed myself to sleep later than normal. Hello, sweet, sweet rest. How I've missed you.