Sleep Deprivation and Marriage

It is never easy to wake-up and find your leg dangling precariously over the side of the bed, as if your sub-conscious has prepared you to flee. Your attempts to roll over are prevented by the person dragging the covers off you, stealing your pillow and laying dead in the middle of your side of the bed. Not mind you, the middle of the King sized bed you share, but rather the middle of your side of the bed. Your arm wedged firmly beneath you, tingling due to the lack of blood circulation and the crick in your neck, it just might be permanent. This is me, six days out of seven.

First Thoughts

Finally, my eyes able to focus I note the time, 2am. Why in the world is it two in the morning, again. Oh, the injustice, is this really my fate. It is 2am, there is a stranger in my bed and I married him more than a decade ago. I frequently wake up with that thought in my mind, “who are you and why are you disturbing my sleep?” It doesn’t last, fading quickly as I am not prone to linger between sleep and the awakened state.

When I try to move his arm tightens around my waist and he makes that small growl in the back of his throat, even in sleep he knows I am trying to move away. It makes me smile even in my annoyance, nonetheless, I slip out of the covers to gain some distance and get my blood circulating again. I know our sleep habits perhaps better than I know our awake habits, he will move back to the center soon and I will regain some small space on “my side” of our King sized bed to finish the rest of my night’s sleep.

Who are you, really? Why are you here?

Image inflexwetrust

My husband, my mate, my partner; all that but mostly the bed hog, cover thief and sleep robber. He is a snuggler far more than I am, in this I think our roles are reversed. For all the years of our marriage, even when we go to bed angry he chases me across the expanse of our bed to trap me in his favored spoon position and hold me there through the night.

I have always been able to take the pulse of our marriage by our sleep position, though there are days I would rather him sleep anywhere but under and around me, I am comforted by his constancy. There has only been one time in the years of our marriage he did not seek me in his sleep, that time now a painful reminder for both of us that we must be present during our waking lives not just our unconscious moments of sleep.

He points to a picture of me as a five-year-old and laughs says I sleep in exactly the same

Only monsters 1963

position today as I did then, asks why I complain. My only answer is, at five I didn’t share the bed, my body didn’t have all the strange grievances then it does today, I was only afraid of monsters and most importantly I never woke up wondering “who the stranger in my bed was”. He just laughs at me and tells me there is always divorce and then I can have the whole bed to myself, yet here we are still married and still spooning.

I love you too.