Twitching – Part 1

I awoke this morning, nestled again within the soft cool skin of our Italian leather sofa. I fell asleep last night to the drone of the television and my husband, Aaron, dutifully came to our living room to turn it off in the wee hours of the morning when he finally decided he had heard enough of “Murder She Wrote” through the walls of our bedroom which backs onto the living room. This is a common enough ritual in our household that Aaron knows not to try to get me to come to bed with him after he turns off the television. It’s hopeless. If I have nodded off in one of our large black leather matching Lane recliners, I may wake up at some point and stumble into bed. But, if the sofa is where I have fallen asleep, there I will stay until the sun peeks through the Venetian blinds and the birds begin their morning concert in my back yard.

It’s not that our bed isn’t comfortable. On the contrary, we spent big bucks on one of those beds where we each have a control to adjust the air chambers on our own side of the mega king size bed to the perfect level of firmness that’s just right for us. I have never slept in a more comfortable bed. It just so happens that after a year Aaron and I both have our perfect level of firmness set at 60. So much for individual needs where the bed is concerned, but it sounded like a good idea at the time. Plus, the bed is adjustable, so we can sit up in bed and read or watch TV, which we rarely ever do because we can’t find the remote lost in the piles of books and games stacked beside the bed, and the TV in the bedroom doesn’t actually work. And let’s not forget the massage feature, which when demonstrated on the showroom floor seemed like the most awesome thing I could imagine. It was so much better than sticking a quarter in the “Magic Fingers” machine at the Motel 6 when I was a kid on vacation with my family, yet faintly reminiscent enough to add a touch of nostalgia to the six-function movement up and down my body. When we tried the massage mode at home, however, it sounded like a freight train was coming straight down the tracks through our bedroom and scared the pants off of both of us, so we never turned it on again – except by accident, with the same results.

No, my husband and I aren’t having marital problems either, at least not any more. We did for a while as most couples do. But, even then sleeping in the living room was not a symptom of the dysfunction in our relationship. The problem is that I twitch – all over and only at night. It often keeps me awake for most of the night and it drives my husband crazy when I lie in bed and toss and turn while he is trying to sleep. He usually has to get up to go to work the next day. I don’t. So, at a certain point, I just started sleeping elsewhere when the twitching was bad. The sofa is the best place; the most comfortable place. It’s cool and warm at the same time; soft and comforting with just the chenille throw for a blanket. If the drone of the TV doesn’t work to short circuit whatever brain waves are causing the twitches, I resort to sleeping with my iPod turned on and chewing on nicotine gum. I know that all the moms in the world (including my own) who read this will have apoplectic fits at the chewing gum and going to sleep thing, but I haven’t choked to death yet and I don’t plan to. The gum ends up in my cheek, which is the way nicotine gum works and it’s always still there when I wake up.

Each night is an adventure and an experiment. I never know when the twitching will start and how or if I will be able to quell it. Some nights are as easy as popping a piece of nicotine gum and climbing into my own bed. Other nights are an hours-long trek from my bed to the guest bed to the recliner with various stops along the way to get a cup of Sleepytime tea or take a couple of Valerian capsules and some Magnesium to help me sleep, yet wander zombie-like long after they have taken effect as the twitching hasn’t stopped and I try to find something to occupy my time until I finally drop dead of exhaustion just as the sun is coming up.

I haven’t always been a twitcher. It all started last October when I came home from the Yucatan in Mexico after having been in hurricane Wilma on a trip to visit my sister, who has lived in Mexico for almost 25 years. I wish I could say I was one of the really strong people of the world who comes through bad situations in great shape, but that just isn’t so. I came home a mess; a big sloppy post-traumatic stress disordered mess who had started smoking again to the tune of almost two packs of cigarettes a day and I began to twitch as soon as the sun went down. I tried to quit smoking when I got home, but that only added to the mess, so my ever-so-patient and understanding non-smoking, asthmatic husband decided he would not bug me about my smoking until I got better, like maybe until I could leave the house or stop hiding under the covers when it was raining and things like that. It was very generous of him. I, in turn, never smoked inside the house, but only in the safety of my back yard, or the front porch when it was raining. Somehow the smoking seemed to help alleviate the twitching, so our agreement allowed me to sleep in our bed most nights as long as I washed away as much of the tell-tale signs of my nasty revived habit before climbing between the sheets.