It’s 3 in the morning. You have half of your bed piled high with pillows and laundry to help fill the emptiness of a too-large queen size bed. And you’re wide awake.
If you’re a military spouse, it’s likely you’ve been there.
Sleep deprivation is a serious issue for many spouses who’ve experienced separation from their mate. Adjusting to sleeping alone often leads us to trying bizarre sleep aids, from sprinkling lavender on our pillow to drinking a warm glass of milk. I’ll admit to typing “home remedies for sleep deprivation” into my favorite search engines at least 10 times over the last few months.
But I know what will help me sleep, and he’s spending his nights sleeping in Iraq. Even on the nights I do manage to get some decent sleep, it seems he manages to sense that and calls me right in the middle of it, not wanting his magical sleep-inducing weight distribution on the bed to be replaced by a long hot bath and some light reading in the Q Encyclopedia. I swear, they do it on purpose.
So if you’re like me, and seven months later you’ve only had a handful of those truly refreshing nights of sleep, you’re probably quite literally tired of it. You find yourself nodding off at the most inopportune times.
Just the other day, my husband recalled a conversation I allegedly had with him at 2:30 a.m. when I told him that when he left, he took half my heart with him, and now everything I do is half-hearted. Rather profound, I think, but I have absolutely no recollection of this conversation.
Lonely, sleepless nights piled on top of one another can sometimes leave you slacking off on your conscious time, but I’ve noticed that the harder I work, the harder I sleep. It’s just getting that initial routine that’s the trouble. Initial, I say, seven months later.