Last night my wife and I went and picked up a mattress and box spring from my late grandfather's house. The mattress was only a couple of years old, which is a newborn baby compared to our old mattress. For the past couple of years, Anna and I had been sleeping on a bed that was older than me. It was my brother's OLD mattress, and he's 10 years older than I am. The thing squeaked, it was hard, uncomfortable, and...well old.
Picture this, just older and shittier. And not cut open..yet.
Yea. It was pretty ridiculous. Either way, we picked up the new mattress, and had a fantastic night of sleep. My first one in a long time. Seriously, my first night of good sleep in a really long time. Let me start from the beginning.
Sleep is so fucking important. It plays a role in just about everything you do. How well you can perform tasks. How well you can handle stress. It effects your mood, your pain, your motivation level. I could go on and on, but it literally has the potential to impact everything you control in your life.
How do I know all this? Well, aside from reading about it, I know because I used to be a beautiful sleeper. I'm serious. I would sleep 8 hours a night, almost every night. I'd wake up feeling like the man. It didn't matter if I left the lights or the TV on. I could go the other way too, turning off all the lights and TV. I would fall asleep no problem in a pitch black room.
Everyone else I knew would complain of having shitty sleep, or just not getting enough, etc. Not me. I slept like a baby on morphine. Every single night. Or at least, 99/100 nights. Every once in a while I'd have a poor nights sleep, but that's just because some asshole let his car alarm go off at 3am. Even then, I'd go back to sleep with no problems. This also excludes nights where I purposely would limit my sleep, to play a new game or to stay out drinking with friends.
Then something changed.
About a month before my wedding, I woke up in the middle of the night, around 2am. That's not really unusual, it had happened before. Sometimes I'd go take a piss, or just roll over and fall back asleep, no problems. But this time was different. I woke up, and was WIDE AWAKE. Like I had just slept a solid 8 hours and woke up, pumped and full of energy. So, I got up, turned on the xbox and figured I'd play a video game for like a half hour till I got tired and went back to sleep. Moment I turned on the TV my wife woke up and told me to shut that shit off. I can't blame her, the thing is bright and loud and woke her up. So now I'm sitting in darkness on my couch. I tried going back to bed, but as I said earlier, that mattress squeaks like a motherfucker, and woke up my wife even more. I'm laying in bed, not tired, tossing and turning and waking my wife up every 10 minutes. Add to it that at this point, I'm feeling guilty that I'm continuously waking her up, and I move back to the couch, where I figure I'll just sit for a little while and wait till I get tired.
Fast forward to like 530am, I'm finally feeling tired again, and I get back to bed (waking my wife up yet again.) It takes me a while to finally fall asleep... and then my alarm is going off waking me up for work. I ended up with like 3 hours of sleep. Ok. I figure it's just an anomaly, whatever - no big deal. But then, the next night it happens again. And continues to happen sporadically over the next few weeks. Not every night, but maybe every other night, or every couple of nights.
Next thing you know, I'm literally having fucking anxiety over being able to sleep. People are telling me, "don't worry it's just nerves over the wedding." Ok, my wife and I get married on September 1st. On our honeymoon, the sleep deprivation happens EVERY NIGHT. We're in the Dominican Republic on the vacation of our lives and I'm fucking tired as hell the entire time.
We come home from the honeymoon, and it's still happening. Thankfully, not every night, but often enough that every time I think I'm beginning to sleep normally again, it would happen and I'd be back to sleeping shittily. And, whenever I would wake up, even just to roll over, my mind would instantly start thinking, "Am I going to be able to fall back asleep? What if I can't? Etc, etc..."
I'm sure everyone knows how terrible it is to try to do anything when you're extremely tired.
No good dude. When I don't get enough sleep, It's like i'm just slogging through the day, not really caring about anything. Just being tired. Oh so tired.
Now, a couple of months later it still happens, but I'm a little less nutty about it. I also make sure I follow a few straight forward things to help me sleep. 1) I sleep in darkness. 2) When I do wake up, unless I have to take a piss, I don't get out of bed. It may take me a little while to fall back asleep, but I still lay there and close my eyes. 3) I try not to think about "will i fall back asleep?" I think about how comfortable I am, and try to let myself fall asleep, rather than forcing myself to fall asleep. If that makes any sense. 4) I finally got a mattress that isn't hard as a rock and doesn't fucking squeak.
Do these things always work? No. They sometimes do. And I still sometimes start my day with only 3-4 hours of sleep. What sucks is I'm slowly beginning to just accept that I'm going to be a shitty sleeper the rest of my life.
Here are some other tips, straight off of the MDA website.
- Sleep in a dark room.
- Read, rather than use a laptop or TV, before going to bed.
- Get exposure to "blue" light during the day. (aka the sun.)
- Sleep in a cooler temperature.
- Have someone give you a massage before bed, or use a foam roller.
- Get yourself into a routine before going to bed.
There are more tips at that link, but some of them are a little out there. Either way, if you're having trouble sleeping, following some of those tips can give some help. I've found that if I go for a walk during the day, I tend to sleep better at night too.
The whole point of this story? Get your goddamn sleep. You never know when you might lose the ability to sleep well.
And here's the pictures of people sleeping that I promised.
awww... she's fucking sleeping!
P.S. - No training tonight, going to look at a few properties with my wife. Tomorrow it's on like donkey kong.
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