I stopped taking the nightly drug that had helped me doze off for nearly a year and a half, cold turkey. Somehow, in the midst of the madness, I started to sleep better than I had since even before my kids were born. And in the same week, as intense as the experience of watching him move was, somehow, that first night, I fell asleep on my own. Then, my husband found a permanent place to live. I kept on taking my nightly drug, convinced I’d always need it. We swapped in and out of it to make things easier for the kids for the next six months. After a year of separate sleeping, maybe more, my husband and I rented out a tiny basement apartment that reeked of mildew. Sleeping separately seemed to foretell the beginning of the end. It seemed like the only time I saw him was in the morning, when we passed one another in the kitchen, and maybe for an hour before bed if he wasn’t working late. He practically lived out of the basement, bringing his clothes for the next day downstairs with him. And during the last year of our marriage, he stopped coming in our bedroom at all. So, I chose the couch that was covered in dog hair and smelled like dog breath instead of a bed next to my husband. Still, even with the help of medication, I could only fall asleep when alone. Each night when I placed the anxiety meds on my tongue and washed it down, I did so without remorse. No path around my brutal, anxiety-driven insomnia.įinally, I stopped fighting it altogether: I went to the doctor and got a prescription. There was simply no good trick that could see me through. I’d exercise, meditate, do yoga, eat my greens and pop melatonin. In the worst of times, I tried everything to set myself up for good sleep in my bed, next to my husband. While I had never been a great sleeper, my restlessness became even more aggravated by the struggles in my relationship. For the last few years of my marriage, the basement couch in my family home became my safe place to escape to on my routine sleepless nights. I jostled him, rearranged the pillows, took an anxiety pill, and then another, before finally admitting defeat. So instead I tossed and turned next to him for hours. I should’ve called it earlier, but I was too worried about what it meant. I tiptoe down the stairs and settle into his basement couch where finally, I feel my whole body melt. They are so tense they like crack like kindling when I move. when I drag my exhausted body out of my new boyfriend’s bed and wrap a blanket around my tired, creaky shoulders. Photo: Stanton Stephens/Getty Images/Image Source
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