So I sit here at 5:30 in the morning with a simply yet unobtainable wish. To recreate a bedwise topography I once found.
About a year ago I had a bad cold. My sinuses were exploding, my ears were over-pressurized my nose was dripping and my throat was drying out. Each way I turned only vreated more bad stuff pushing into somewhere I didn’t want it.Plus my back was hurting from all the nights of tossing and turning. I threw my pillows in disgust, went to pee, and came back angrily into bed. I missed my normal sleeping spot by a couple feet, and was leaning against the headboard on a pile of pillows. But low and behold by some miracle it was the perfect position. I meant to move, but the energy sapped out of me as I sank into perfect slumber. The angle of my back made it better than it had felt in years, My various mucosal cavities all drained somewhere without choking me. I woke up perfectly satisfied.
Well now I have the same cold. I also have the same bed and the same pillows and blankets. (as well as the same bad back and fat gut). But it won’t work. the memory of that glorious pootion is eteched into my brain, but there is no way construct it out of the materials on hand as much as I have tried for 6 hours now. :mad:
I feel your pain! I once hit upon the perfect combination of pillow placement, room temperature, blanket distribution, leg position, arm placement and head angle that allowed me to drift into a perfect sleep for several hours. I can still feel the cool brush of the sheet as it floated into position. But I have never been able to recreate that Nirvana. And I regret that I didn’t have the foresight to memorize the exact layout when it happened. I was too blissful.
Years ago, on one beautiful sunny day, I took a book down to a beach that’s covered with big broken-up granite blocks, and sat down and read for a couple of hours. After hundreds of micro-adjustments, I found the perfect position on a pile of rubble – no pointy bits cutting into me, my back supported nicely, my head cradled as by a doting lover, my legs splayed bizarrely, but each finding just the right spot.
It was a nice, tranquil spot, not easily approached, and the sound of the tide lapping against the rocks put me in a total state of relaxation. At some point, I drifted off to blissful sleep and dropped my book, only to be woken up some time later by a concerned citizen who’d clambered down the rocks after me. “Hey! Are you okay? Do you need an ambulance?”
I suppose it looked like I’d had a nasty fall.
Anyway, I’ve gone back there several times with the intention of sitting, lunching, and reading, but I’ve never been able to find a position again that was comfortable enough to even read for a reasonable length of time – never mind doze off. But that one time, I found the perfect ergonomic niche for my body, hidden away in a jagged rockpile.
I have had two or three Perfect Sleeps in my life. Alas, I think trying to re-attain them is a fool’s errand.
The best sleep I ever had was when I was very stressed having just moved to Hong Kong. My then-SO and I had only just got jobs, but were running out of money, and we lived in a hovel with no curtains. We had had little sleep for weeks on end. One night we were in the city until late, and we missed our ferry home, and had to check into a ‘Love Hotel’.
It was pitch dark. It was gently air conditioned. It was silent apart from the a/c’s reassuring hum. The bed was surprisingly clean and intensely comfy. Best of all, it was rented by the hour so nobody came to kick us out at any time.
Both of us slept, without waking once, for fourteen hours straight. We awoke in a state of pure joy, ready to take on the world and whatever it could throw at us.
I’ve only had perfect sleep twice in my life. The first time was when I was a junior in high school and had my mouth wired shut, and the second time was 4 years ago when I had my wisdom teeth taken out.
I’d read about that phenomenon where one is so tired, one lies down and falls asleep. Didn’t think it really existed though. Then, one afternoon, after a bad night’s sleep and a stressful day at work, I laid down, and the next thing I knew, it was three hours later, and the only thing in between was a short blink of darkness.
The last perfect sleep I had was flat on my back during a sublime early Sunday afternoon nap. It was this summer over July 4th weekend. I went on a long run that took about three hours then came back and showered then ate an enormous breakfast/brunch - not enough to make me sick or anything, but enough to make my belly round just slightly.
My head was a little sore from the run (probably a little dehydrated) so I drank a giant glass of water, got naked and threw myself into bed flat on my back and sank into complete oblivion. It was heavenly. I woke up a few hours later staring dumbly at the patterns the sunlight made on the blinds. Then my eyes drifted shut again and I fell asleep for another hour and woke up feeling lazy and wonderful.
