On Sleeping Together

I am a terrible bed-buddy.

I was under the impression that I would be an excellent sleeping partner. I have perfectly acceptable past experiences in regards to bed-sharing. When I shared a bed with my little sister while on vacation, she was the one that tried shove me off the bed in the middle of the night. Whenever I was forced to share beds with a teammate during track road trips, I always woke up in the exact same position in which I fell asleep—on my stomach with my arms curled up beneath me taking up approximately one-fifth of the width of the bed.

It turns out, however, that all these instances were simply the result of being uncomfortable enough with the idea of sleeping with another person that I coerced my subconscious to keep my body in check while asleep. Here are some important facts about me and sleep:

1) I have nightmares.

2) I wake up a lot.

3) Upon waking up, I am delirious. I lose all ability to problem solve and rely entirely on instinct.

4) Though I am delirious, I always feel entirely coherent and logical.

5) But seriously, I’m totally delirious. Can’t even speak.

So our bed is old and crappy. It sags in the middle, so there is a cavernous pit that eats us both every night. It’s also hot in our apartment a lot. But I’m always cold, so I always want to sleep under the covers anyway. This is what a typical night look likes:

I tell Brian goodnight and then roll over under the covers. I wake up halfway through the night and see a husband lying next to me. “Husband!” I think. “Must cuddle!” I throw myself at him. When he doesn’t move, I assume he hasn’t woken up. The next morning he will assure me that he did. I wake up a few minutes later and think, “Must let husband sleep!” So I roll away (taking a portion of the blankets with me). I wake up later after a nightmare. “Husband will save me!” I attack him again, only to roll away with shame (and more blanket) later. At this point, it really has begun to get cold in our room, so I wake up and snuggle under the blankets with just enough cognizant thought to remember that I am a notorious blanket thief. So I throw my blankets over onto Brian to keep him warm. I succeed in waking him up. This process repeats itself throughout the night.

Last night I decided to do things differently. I was going to be a good wife and let my poor husband sleep. So I took my good-bed-sharer stance right on the edge of the bed. When Brian came to bed, though, he shocked me awake so my first reaction was that I should move over (because typically I would have been enveloped in the cavern in the middle of our bed). However, since I am insane upon waking up, my thought process was “ROLL OVER! FAST!” So I did. And I smacked my lip on the night stand. I began making sounds probably best represented by a lot of As, Gs, Hs, and gurgling. Brian asked me what was wrong, and I clearly said, “I hit my lip on the night stand.” When he didn’t understand me, though, I realized I must have actually said, “Thgsde lkjnde dsgnfnskdnf suewfs” as usual. I’m getting bored of writing this story, so I’ll just say that I got really mad (because when I have so many sleep-amplified emotions unable to escape due to my inability to communicate at all they just kind of turn into anger) and hit the nightstand and scared Brian and then went to sleep and ended up having a nightmare and attacking Brian for comfort in the middle of the night anyway.