I’ve had really bad insomnia for a while now, several years at least. It comes and goes with severity, usually a week on/week off. I have both kinds of insomnia, the kind where I can’t fall sleep and the other one where I fall asleep at a normal hour (sometimes even early) but then I wake up at 2am and am awake the rest of the night surfing really bad cable shows. The insomnia has gotten so bad at times that I used to record cable movies and talk shows during the day on my DVR so I would have something more interesting to watch at 3am when I was by myself in the loneliness a night full of sleeping neighbors and family members.
Sometimes I would just go sit in my daughter’s room and rock in the rocking chair and listen to her quiet breathing. I would silently pray to God to let me fall asleep, or I’d scream at him silently for the horrors that insomnia brings over time. Why me, God, why? Then I would turn myself around and thank him profusely for the sleeping beauty that was lying peacefully just a few feet in front of me, and realize that lack of sleep was nothing compared to what some people in this world have to endure. I still didn’t fall asleep after these coming-to-Jesus moments, but at least I went back to my solitary sofa with a more peaceful frame of mind.
I think the night music started sometime last year. I was suffering from yet another debilitating sinus infection where I could only breathe air into one side of my nose, my head felt like it was going to explode, my eyeballs felt like they were being pushed out of my skull, and my throat was raw from the gunk slipping down the back. I blamed my chronic sinus problems for my insomnia, as well as other symptoms. Like my “Night Music.”
The Night Music was the one symptom I never brought up to any of the Doctors I’ve seeked out for my varying symptoms. I was so incredibly afraid, terrified, that there was something seriously wrong with me. Brain tumor? Mental Illness? So many other things ran through my mind. I guess I should explain what my Night Music really sounds like.
When I’m lying in bed, trying desperately to clear my brain and meditate and pray to fall asleep, the house is quiet, my husband and daughter are sleeping and we have the whir of an air filter in our room as well as a small fan that my husband has on his side of the bed. So it’s quiet but there’s white noise. And then I hear my music start. It’s a muffled sound, like maybe someone left a radio on in another room down the hall. Or maybe my neighbor two doors down has music playing outside in their yard. Or maybe I’m completely going insane. At least that’s what I was absolutely, positively, desperately afraid of.
Most nights the music sounds like a symphony, or an orchestra. It’s typically classical music sounding. I can’t hear an exact song (i.e., Für Elise). And I can’t hear any words typically (except for the night I heard a Bruce Springsteen concert in the neighbors yard?). But the music is clear as day (or shall I say night?). I can actually hum the tune if I wanted to. If this music doesn’t exist, I thought, am I meant to be a song writer? Is God talking to me right now? Is he giving me some kind of CRAZY sign right now? No. There is just no way. I’m just plain crazy. And so I told nobody. Not my husband. And certainly none of my multiple Doctors.
Another very common music I hear is Carousel music. VERY annoying at 2am. I also get a little woozy since I can’t help but picture my daughter on said Carousel riding a funky outfitted Zebra as he leaps and bounds in a dizzying circle in front of me. I feel like I have to watch it to it’s completion so I can maybe get it out of my head? Kind of like when you get an annoying song stuck in your head and you try to “finish” the lyrics so you can definitively STOP the music?
Except it never works, and so I relegate myself to the couch for some good ole Cable programming. At least the Night Music will stop. Until tomorrow night anyway, when I have to go buy more tickets for the Carousel from Hell.
So now that I’ve been researching and studying Lyme Disease for the past few months, as I talk to my friend whose whole family has been plagued by the diagnosis and treatment cycles, and as I am now diagnosed with LD myself, I can finally talk about my Night Music. Now that I know I am not going to end up in a rubber room with a straight-jacket on, I can almost laugh at this seemingly innocuous symptom. Tinnitis move over, I have Night Music to lull me to sleep. And maybe I’ll just go out and buy one of those little pocket voice recorders and hum the tunes I hear. If I can find a way to translate them to real music, maybe I’ll be a musical virtuoso. Heck, it would help me pay my mounting medical bills.
From Phantom of the Opera’s “Music of the Night”. Music written by the great and almighty Andrew Lloyd Webber, Lyrics by Charles Hart.
Softly, deftly, music shall caress you.
Hear it, feel it, secretly possess you.
Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind.
In this darkness that you know you cannot fight.
The darkness of the music of the night.
1 comment:
My goodness! Indeed you are a fantastic writer. Night Music reminds me of this from one of my favorite poets:
To Know the Dark (Wendell Berry)
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
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