Surely, as of today, it will be different. Surely with Trump gone, vaccines on the way, and the Raptors winning again, slumber will come, and more importantly stay.
Surely it will be as it was when I was a kid when I slept the untroubled sleep of the innocent, when I could nod off wherever and whenever I felt the need, when I could stay in that dormant state for hour after luxuriant hour.
Surely, once again, I will get under the sheets with the same sort of happy anticipation I once did, knowing that soon, in Dylan Thomas’ phrase, I would be “sleep becalmed.”
A fella can dream can’t he. When you are younger, older people don’t tell you the full truth about some of the surprising things that await you.
One of them is this: there will come a time when a good night’s uninterrupted sleep will mean as much to you as a night at the Normaway Inn, or a dinner up at The Wild Caraway.
One-third of Canadians don’t get the necessary seven to nine hours of nightly slumber, according to the latest figures from Statistics Canada. Almost half of us don’t find the sleep we get refreshing. The 2017 report also said that 43% of men and 55% of women aged 18 to 64 reported having trouble going to sleep or staying asleep.
As someone who falls squarely within Statscan’s troubled sleeper’s category I know I should worry about the big maladies, yet it’s the daily inconveniences that I fret about.
They sound like little things, but really they are not. Experts link not getting enough sleep with increased risk for many serious ailments including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity, as well as depression and other mood disorders.
As someone who falls squarely within Statscan’s troubled sleeper’s category I know I should worry about the big maladies, yet it’s the daily inconveniences that I fret about.
Not having slept right makes it harder to work with the brain or the body, your workouts suffer, you’re cranky to those around you.
Life is just not what it should be when the day ahead is an uphill climb and you just really want to lie down.
COVID-19, of course has made things worse.
I don’t, to my knowledge, spend my day thinking about the pandemic seething just beyond our borders. Yet, since the coronavirus hit, my dreams have been odder, not so much frightening as unsettling, which does not make for a serene 40 winks.
The chronic aches and pains can leave you sitting there, middle of the night, trying to remember the deep breathing exercises someone once showed you for calming the distracted mind.
Like many folks, I’ve also put my body through much hardship in the past decades. The chronic aches and pains can leave you sitting there, middle of the night, trying to remember the deep breathing exercises someone once showed you for calming the distracted mind.
The stuff higher up the pain threshold can be enough to make you say hell with it, why even bother trying for some shut-eye.
Of course, we must, so the tossing and turning begins, in search of, if not comfort, at least physical ease.
There are the aides: the sleep masks and ear plugs, the white noise, the weighted blankets, the windows open and closed, the bite plates, the CBD oil.
Every little bit does help, and every evening those searching for a night of peace hope this will be the one where it all comes together in eight blissful hours.
Now, well who knows. It’s a brand-new day.
No longer will I spend long hours hunched over my iPhone, Trump-scrolling to learn of the latest affront to decency.
No more will the darkness of the Trump presidency trouble my sleep.
Or, technically, should the pandemic, which, Toronto’s The Globe and Mail noted this week, Nova Scotia’s leadership and public health folks have handled with skill and discipline.
There are, it goes without saying, so many things to still keep a person awake at night. At some point they, too, may haunt my dreams.
My hope is that this moment is not now, because I could use one night’s good sleep. I guess we all could.
