I am having trouble sleeping. As in, I am most awake between midnight and 2 a.m. I lie in bed, eyes buzzing behind the mask I wear to fool myself into the deeper darkness that is sleep, body begging for rest, mind for the longed for slowing to come. When they do come, the moments before sleep are delicious, like that moment right before one goes out before having a medical procedure, when they’ve given you the amnesiac drug so that you are obedient when they tell you to turn over so that doctor and assistants can put a tube up your butt to make sure that there are no nasty things growing invisibly inside you. You can be obedient but not embarrassed, though perhaps you are embarrassed even though you’ve been given the drug, it’s just that you don’t remember it. Which is fine with me.
The last time I had a colonoscopy, the anesthesiologist administered the potion into the tube in my arm and that sweet everything letting go feeling started to take over my consciousness. I looked up at my GI doc. “God, I love drugs,” I said. The last thing I remember is his slightly startled but understanding expression. We are both of a certain age. We can afford to remember those days generally — and inaccurately — referred to as The Sixties, with nostalgia. We did not burn out. Our eyeballs do not bug out of our heads as we panhandle on street corners. Nor are we glassy-eyed visionaries. We are highly respectable functioning members of society.
I wonder if he can sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment