To sleep..perchance to dream

They say people like Beethoven, Mozart and Einstein rarely slept. They say this is because they were creative geniuses and when people like that are in the zone, they forget to do things like eat, sleep, bathe, etc. People like that get so caught up in the creative spark nothing else, no voice or need gets past the gate. The theory seems to be borne out by the incredible things they accomplished while in the throes of the zone.

I believe that this is probably true. I think it's also probably true that both men were nutty as fruitcakes, something common to geniuses on one level or another. I'm a genius. I'm creative and when I am in the zone, I also forget to eat, sleep, etc. Being in the zone is alot like what I imagine being caught in a tornado or whirlpool would be. It barges in out of the blue, grabs you, takes off with you and you don't know anything at all until you either break the surface or are set back down. I'm also nutty as a fruitcake to varying degrees at different times.

They also say creative genuises burn very bright and die very early.

It's nice to have so much in common with these guys. I admit to waking in the night with sudden insights involving html, hexcodes and tables, having to fight the urge to sign on at three a.m. or so to tweak a page, but I don't think I can attribute my current sleep problems to a divine creative spark or mad genius.

All my life I've had trouble sleeping. I have sleep apnea, for one thing. If the fan isn't blowing directly on me, so I feel the air moving against my skin or if it gets too warm in the room, I simply stop breathing. My husband tells me this can go on for minutes at a time, but I have a hard time believing that and, not being awake, can't gauge it myself. In any case, I stop breathing. Studies say people with apnea tend to be sleepier during the day because we never really hit a deep sleep. So there's that to start with.

It's very difficult for me to stop thinking at night. When it's late and everyone is asleep and it's quiet and my attention doesn't need to be engaged elsewhere, it leaves my mind free to wander. My mind does this with malicious glee and as often as not, instead of searching to find solutions to various problems it insists on showing me all the ways things can get worse. I've gone through the nasty deaths of my husband and children more times than I care to count, as well as every other conceivable horror which can befall a family in which the mother is not vigilant enough.

Vigilance keeps me awake. I'm often afraid to fall asleep lest one of the kids make a noise in the night I am thus unable to hear which leads to their death or abduction, and I always have an ear listening to the windows and doors lest someone should attempt to come through them, or the tell tale rumble of an approaching earthquake.

I've always had very vivid dreams, for another thing. Lately, they've been nightmares. The most vivid and most recent involved a variation of a common one for me, that of being chased relentlessly by someone intent on chopping me up. Usually it's a man but this time, for spice, it was a short woman with a very sharp blade and a St. Bernard which was helping her. You know the kind of dream I mean, where no matter how many fences you jump, houses you go through, labyrinthine twists and turns you take, your pursuer is always right behind you, just inches from slicing you to pieces. Or the one in which the massive tidal wave is coming over the hill and I have to get everyone to safety at the top of the very high building we are in.

From my late teens, insomnia has been an issue. Someone told me this is probably due to PTSD, which is due in its turn to the rape and abuse, etc. Whatever causes it, I sometimes go through periods of three days where I just don't sleep. I'll lay there after everyone else is asleep, watching the clock, thinking I can function if I can get five hours sleep...then I'll be okay if I can get four hours...I'll at least be able to drive if I can get an hour and a half...by the time I decide I might as well get out of bed and clean something instead of laying there, it's a half hour before I have to wake the kids and I'm a weepy mess who knows, KNOWS the clock is watching me and laughing.

I currently have a combo of all this going on. Dreams, insomnia, apnea, hyper-vigilance and I am always half awake through it all. As I toss and turn in my half sleep or as I watch the clock and the time slipping away from me at night, I feel more and more that little bits of me slip away with it. Sloughing like dead skin at first and then peeled from the raw, bleeding places left behind, tiny bits of me are being taken. Punishment for not falling asleep. Punishment for not being vigilant enough. For not being perfect, not having all the answers, wanting more than I have a right to.