In the last few days, maybe weeks also, I've been experiencing slight headaches. Not the jackhammering types that render one incapable of any action, but the dull hovering types that just tiptoe their ways in and set up shop before you realize you're squinting and pressing the bridge of your nose or that spot at your temples.
Of course, when I say you, I mean me.
The onset has seemed somewhat inexplicable, with no really specific reason. For a while I had been attributing the headaches to the way the weather keeps changing, cold and hot. I always do get a bit ill whenever this happens, nothing new.
I've always had lots of nights in the past month where I haven't been able to sleep. I'd endured that restless sleep that is probably very well known with many people who are perpetual reminiscers and ponderers. Again, I'm never really sure why exactly some nights I am able to sleep and some nights I'm just tossing and turning and no matter what, sleep never comes until that strange time when it's neither night nor is it yet dawn..
One thing I do know, however, is I cannot sleep with light. Well, actually I can, but the circumstances would have to be just a certain way. Either I'm extremely tired, or I'm in that sluggish lethargy that accompanies me in the afternoons when I've eaten and sitting in a pool of warm sunshine. Siesta mode.
But at night, in bed, in my room, I need darkness. That extra pale light that filters into the room, creeping through the blinds, glowing behind the curtains, reflecting on the walls... once the quintessence of darkness has been diluted, my mind is not able to rest.
Last night, I was actually pretty tired. My eyes had that dry tiredness that simply beckoned at sleep. But despite having drifted off to sleep, in the nocturnal silence, I sensed the footsteps of that approaching spectre before it actually arrived. Even in the dark, I was reflexively squinting my eyes and head to the little light that was magnified by its mere presence. The headache was coming.
That's it. I couldn't take it, I told myself. ENOUGH is enough. I got up and in the dark, eyes still fussily closed, I fumbled about in my basket of freshly laundered clothes, and found the black pillowcase I knew was sitting there, and tied myself a blindfold.
WHAT a difference. I cannot tell you what an amazing night of sleep I had. I have this tendency of waking up right at the crack of dawn, when the morning light starts filtering in, and my cat also usually is up and about and she always comes in sniffing and jumps up to sit at her pillow at my window and spends hours of impending morning just watching outside and meowing quietly at the birds. I'm a morning person, so I've always just reveled that much more in those quiet mornings. But, this morning I didn't awake. I was so entirely in the crutches of deep sleep and up till that hour I finally awoke and got out of bed, I was really SLEEPING. My god, it felt wonderful. And it still feels wonderful. The difference is just MINDBLOWINGG.
Don't underestimate sleep, yo.
