"When I was little, sleep was a problem. Sleep resembled death. If I closed my eyes, would they ever open again? What if I existed only in a giant's dream, and would vanish when he rose? Occasionally, in the wee hours, I'd wake to a silence so intense it boomed in my eardrums and shook my brain - a phenomenon known (I kid you not) as exploding-head syndrome."
"As I got older, though, I forced myself to learn to sleep. Whatever the environment, I could conk out, no problem. On a futon, in a tent, in a barely reclining economy seat on a long-haul flight to the other side of the planet - all I had to do was close my eyes and shut myself down, like C-3PO in Star Wars."
"While I had no trouble falling asleep, I had trouble staying asleep: I'd wake two or three times a night for no reason, not even needing to pee. I slept too hard on my right side and threw my shoulder out of whack. Sometimes I'd wake up an hour before my alarm, my body a furnace that refused to perspire."
Childhood sleep was terrifying and uncertain, with fears of not waking and episodes of exploding-head syndrome. Later life brought effortless sleep across varied environments, from futons to long-haul flights, always waking refreshed. In the late 40s, sleep became disrupted: falling asleep remained easy but staying asleep did not, with two to three nightly awakenings, shoulder pain from side sleeping, early morning overheating, occasional pre-alarm waking, and morning lightheadedness. Occasional difficulty falling asleep led to darkly comic counting-sheep imagery. A structured sleep diary was kept over a cold January week to record nightly and morning routines and identify patterns.
Read at Inverse
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