Sleep: My Schizophrenic Friend

Hello, my friend.  So nice to see you. 

You know how fond I am of you and how much I enjoy spending time together.  So it is with love and affection that I think we need to talk about a difficult topic: your multiple personality disorder.

Just because you are this way doesn’t mean I love you any less.  I just think it is important for us to talk about this in the name of maintaining a healthy relationship.

Loving: This is the part of you I enjoy the most.  At the end of the day, you call to me alluringly to join you.  I can be anywhere in the entire house, and yet, as the hour grows later, your call becomes stronger and louder.  “I’m coming, my love.”  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”  And when all of the work of the day is done and I join you in the bedroom, you open your arms wide to embrace me.  So warm.  So comforting.  This is you at your very best and you should take pride in how much warmth and comfort you bring.

Childish: There are times when you are so impatient.  You know I hear your call and you know I would love nothing more than to drop everything and be enveloped in your arms.  However, you frequently show up and demand attention at the most inconvenient times.  You’re like a child who stomps her feet and declares she will hold her breath until she gets what she wants.  Really, my friend, I expect better things from you after all we’ve been through together.  Occasionally I can placate you with a cup of coffee, a walk around the block (or the house) or a snack.  But often, you simply won’t take “not right now” for an answer.  We all have things we need to do.  I promise to join you each day as soon as I’m able but it really is unreasonable how you demand my attention in the late afternoon, on my train ride home from work, while reading in bed, and even while watching TV.  Good things come to those who wait, my friend.

Fickle: One of the more frustrating traits you show sometimes is how, after coaxing me into your arms, you lose interest in me and send me packing.  On a drowsy weekend afternoon when I finally succumb to your call for a short nap together.  I join you and then you leave me at the altar, with nothing but a restless sense of time I should have spent doing something else.  Other times, you leave me too early.  Just because I’ll occasionally get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom doesn’t mean our time together is done.  But from time to time, when I return to bed, you’re already gone.  “Nooooo!” I implore you.  I wasn’t finished spending time with you.  “Come back.  I still have 45 minutes before the alarm will go off.”  For someone who can be so insistent in demanding my attention when you want it, I find it a bit selfish that you won’t extend me the same courtesy.

I hope you took this in the spirit it was intended, my friend.  I love you and felt it needed to be said to keep our relationship strong.

Now come give me a hug.

Frosty