When Jet Lag Meets a Sleep Disorder

STFU already!

Like most insomniacs, the noise of my incessantly chatty brain at 2 in the morning is more than I can stand. So I silently scream at myself, over and over again, desperate enough to hope a profane admonition will force me to finally, mercifully nod off. As if.

Someone just club me over the head already.

There is jet lag and then there is an insomniac’s jet lag. In the former, a traveler can’t keep her eyes open past nine o’clock only to have them spring open at three in the morning. The latter condition means that at three in the morning, the traveler is still wide awake and losing it, failing to fall asleep in a hotel room that is too hot and unbearably dry. (She does notice, however, that the ceiling smoke alarm seems to be blinking a message at her in code. “Go to sleep already,” the red light on the device taunts her.)

On our travels together, my husband’s sleeping usually keeps me awake. I find it unbearable that he can sleep at all, especially on those occasions (I will not let this go, I admit) he enjoyed almost a full night’s sleep flying across the Atlantic in his upgraded business class seat/bed while I was uncomfortably awake all night in my cramped ‘back of the bus’ seat.

On our last trip together, trying to be nice to me when I couldn’t sleep, he would often pop up, awake, offering to distract me from my sleepless agony.

“A game of Scrabble?” he would ask me, his eyes half open.

My own bloodshot eyes would communicate where he could stuff his game and his iPad too while he was at it.

He would roll over and be asleep in less than a minute. I often had to restrain myself from smothering him with a pillow.

The Melatonin, the sleeping pills, the tranquilizers, the alcohol....nothing sends me to Dreamland. (A trip to the Betty Ford Center mind you may be necessary in my future.) I suppose I should consider staying put long enough to get my circadian rhythms in order. 

Coming, going or staying put, though, it doesn’t matter. I feel doomed to lie awake, cataloguing my First World Problems as a way of ridiculing my own sleepless distress.  I remind myself that at the end of the day, jet lag and insomnia are both privileged conditions.

But who knew guilt was a stimulant?