Lion and Magic Boy

So this week I discovered a new sleep aid.

O blessed Valium, where have you been hiding?
I only wish that the small brown bottle was everlasting
But refills are zero
Still, you are my hero
And with you, to oblivion I go

I’ve had insomnia problems for, like, 15 years. Some of them I can attribute to pregnancy (have you ever tried to sleep with an eight-pound bowling ball stuffed under your skin? That’s melting the ligaments around your pelvis and causing your entire body to swell to proportions for which it CLEARLY was not designed? yes? One question — WHY????!!), but mainly, my mind refuses to go to the “off” position and I find myself thinking about all sorts of random things, like what maybe I’ll cook for tomorrow’s dinner, and lately all sorts of legal-divorce stuff, and designing halloween costumes, and reworking endings of movies we saw lately and other incredibly useful useless crap.

So the Valium apparently disconnects this wiring and instead my face is blanketed with blackness as if some giant pillow is placed there not in suffocation but in gentle repose, allowing me a buffer between my brain and the world at large.

So waking up in a semi-drugged state is seemingly worth the six hours of blessed oblivion this affords me. Only problem is, there’s a finite supply and in general I’m not so good with the prescription medication, or even anything over-the-counter (I didn’t even own Advil until Michael moved in with his pharmacopeia of little brown bottles). It seems a little like giving up, giving in to some unknown affliction that I’d prefer not to be labeled with.

I’ve had some weird dreams with this stuff, too, though not as weird as the one I had in college when there was an influx of giant caterpillars taking over the world and the entire planet’s population was gathered on the football field and somehow I had to communicate with the caterpillars about their plans. I hated all the pressure from being chosen to do this and those caterpillars were so disgustingly…slimy.

Another prophetic dream was the one I had in, say, August of 2001. The name “Osama bin Laden” kept permeating my brain for weeks that month, and one night I dreamed I was holed up in my house with my family with bombs going off everywhere outside and I could hear voices speaking an unknown language outside and I knew they were related to the total annihilation of the planet that was apparently coming up momentarily, so I had seconds to say goodbye to my family and to accept what was coming next, which I did so and then everything was fine and quiet.

So……anti-depressants? What do you think?