Sunday Night Syndrome

I regularly suffer from insomnia, but it is particularly the case on Sunday nights.  

I have tried white noise, lavender baths, scented candles, breathing techniques, positive thinking, negative thinking, no thinking.  None of it works.  I don't eat late in the evening and avoid drinking alcohol on Sundays but even so, a Sunday night date with insomnia is a regular fixture.  It’s not the worst date I have ever had.  That involved a man who was at least 10 years older than the photo he had posted on the internet dating site and who talked about sex for the entire hour that I spent in his company.  I stayed 55 minutes longer than I should have because I didn't want to seem rude!  I may have insomnia, but I am eternally grateful I am not suffering it lying in bed next to him - that would be taking good manners too far.

I read somewhere years ago that people who didn’t like school sleep badly on Sunday nights.   That would be me.  Obviously my brain has worked out that my schooldays were 34 years ago, my sleep pattern hasn’t.  If I could visualise my sleep pattern, it would be along the lines of 70s flock wallpaper with a psychedelic vomit spatter, and don’t tell me that flock wallpaper is back as if that is a good thing.  

Scientific research, also known as a quick surf on Google, confirms that I am not alone, Sunday Night Syndrome, also called Sunday Night Depression, is apparently common and can last decades.  That has put my tired, agitated mind at rest, so glad I looked into it.  Tonight’s bout of insomnia started with me falling straight to sleep and then waking up 20 minutes later, having had a nightmare.   The instant but very short-lived deep sleep is a new twist.  I presume it is another side effect of the menopause – the gift that just keeps giving and giving.   The bad dream forces me to wake up and then I can’t get back to sleep.

After three hours of trying and failing to sleep, I got up and made a cup of tea.  My insomnia is a few decades past the stage where I wouldn’t touch tea after 4 p.m. because it might disturb my sleep.  When I can sleep, nothing will wake me.  When I can’t sleep, nothing works.  An obvious solution might be sleeping tablets, but do you actually sleep on those or are you just unconscious?  It isn’t a proper sleep so surely when you wake, you feel just as groggy as if you hadn’t slept – without the fun part where you had tea, toast, watched rubbish on the telly and surfed the internet for the house you will buy when you win the Eurolottery.  Online real estate, porn for the middle-aged. 

 

I wonder if I would still have Sunday night insomnia with a surfeit of ready cash and designer homes.  I’m not fooling myself that money makes people happy, I just wonder if it makes them sleepy, but I doubt it.  I now have just over an hour until I need to  get up to go to work, and I can already tell it is going to be a fun Monday.  The insomnia is getting worse so I do need to do something about it, but I would rather not go down the route of medication.   So until I find my cure, I will be here, every Sunday, staring at the ceiling until I succumb to late night / early morning television and its plethora of bad sitcoms.