Sleep Diary - part 1

A sleep diary is a record of an individual’s sleeping and waking time with related information, usually over a period of several weeks.

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Day 1 – How would you rate the quality of your sleep last night?  

              1      2       3        4           5

              V. poor                            V. good

Thanatos – Nathan isn’t sleeping well.  In fact, he can’t remember when he last had a proper night’s sleep in his own bed.  He’s followed all the advice – put away his electronica, invested in heavier curtains, followed a soothing, bedtime routine - but it’s not made any difference at all.  He still can’t sleep.

Of course he knows what the real problem is.  It’s the dead baby that occupies the space in the middle of the bed between him and Erin.  He envies the baby’s stillness, its innocent, dreaming state. And damn, Erin can sleep – in fact, that’s all she seems to do at the moment.  Perhaps he doesn’t actually envy Erin, but rather he resents her.  How can she sleep after everything?  How can that possibly be fair?

He can’t talk to her because there are no words that can begin to reach what he feels and he’s sure that some things are better left undefined by the sounds of speech.  Instead, Nathan rides the mundanity of his days – his hospital shifts, his microwave dinners, his midnight-shit movies that he watches because it’s an easier option than sleeping next to his wife.

It’s not true, however, to say Nathan gets no sleep at all because he’s managed to find a kind of solution – a cure, if you will.  Down the road from the hospital, two bus stops from their house, a reasonable (cash only) rate for three hours and a kind of peace.  Ros’s room leaves a lot to be desired in terms of taste and hygiene – he wishes, for instance that before his session, she’d tidy away the jonnies from the leopard-skin, bedside table.  But here, at least, for a few, snatched hours, he can close his eyes and drift away.

There’s nothing at all sexual in his time with Ros, even though things with Erin are no longer what you’d call sexual either.  He can’t touch Erin/he can’t not touch Erin.  But with Ros, he can be held without the weight of a lost baby giving him cramp.  Nathan, the ex-father, safe in another woman’s arms.

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Eros – I was a mother.  And as I massage Vaseline into my leaking nipples, I contemplate both the stupidity of the human body (does it not know yet that everything has changed?) and my sad, strange use of the past tense.

What helps me get through each day is the work I’m doing on old, British customs.  That, and sleep.  I could sleep forever because in sleep, everything is possible.  Everything still exists.

My research at the moment is focusing on mummers’ plays. We have the band of actors in their masks.  The hero, Saint George and Slasher, the villain.  The hero is killed and then brought back to life through the cure provided by the quack doctor.  The devil appears at the end of the play and as is his wont, he collects his due from the audience.  Everything is resolved and the masked band moves on.  I love the simplicity of this old play, its straightforward narrative.

The days since have fallen into an undemanding pattern – my research, the writing up of the next part of my dissertation and then sleep; something to eat and then sleep.  There are some days I don’t even get out of bed and the growing pile of cups and plates on the floor on my side bear witness to this.  Nathan is so often not here – in the day or at night.  I don’t miss him because how can you really miss someone you don’t know any more?  He is utterly unknowable to me.  We speak about nothing.

Although I have little problem getting to sleep, my sleep paralysis is worse than it’s ever been.  When I wake up at whatever time it happens to be, my mind is so clear and I can hear everything perfectly; but my body is as still and unable to move as my dead baby.  Sometimes, I try to call out or lurch my body into wakefulness.  I will my body to move, but there is nothing I can do.  I’ve had this paralysis on and off for most of my life and doctors have said it’s just a mismatch between different parts of my brain waking up; but the powerlessness it brings fills me with terror.   And, oh the visions…

I’m not convinced Nathan even knows the baby’s gone.  There are no words he’s spoken to me that even acknowledge the fact.  When he’s here, he only tiptoes around me like a parent not wanting to wake a sleeping child.  Did I even imagine the baby myself?  Fairy changeling.  Poor, little alien.

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Thanatos and Eros – in Erin’s waking dreams, the mummers process. They are silent and masked.  First the drummer, sticks by his side.  Then the rabbit headed one, the crow and the ram’s head.  The devil brings up the rear after the undefinable mummer with the sack-cloth - loose and askew over his head, rope-tight around his neck.  In Erin’s bedroom, their images shimmer and the very air around them crackles with static.

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