Make your bed and lie in it
Tuesday, August 28th, 2018 10:08 pmFor the last few nights I've been sleeping on the futon in the narrow side bedroom. My dreams have been amazing, the temperature has been perfect, neither too hot nor cold and with no horrible breezes blowing on my poor chilly head and shoulders and feet. I wake content and cozy, thinking of/ remembering things that I've forgotten for years. The side room has always been like that: something of a den apart from the outside world, where I'd squirrel away on return from Japan or after operations. (It's also closer to the bathroom, is why it's so good for recovery.) The front bedroom is large and faces on the street, and when I wake up in it there's a sense of space all round me: the Out There, the unsatisfactory real world that I have to get up and drag my aching body into. The side room's sequesteredness is almost like having my hormones and my secondary worlds again; even if I don't tell myself stories any more, memories return of autumn days in Pau and winter days in Tokyo, which is almost as good.
But there may be another factor at work. When I sleep on the front bedroom's mattress, my knees scream at me when I try to stand on them and my hips twinge as I roll over. *Possibly* I just had a very good massage on Sunday, but that hasn't happened for the last three or four nights. I can sleep happily without a pillow between my knees, or under them if I'm on my back. Though I have nothing to hold on to when I stand up, my knees don't buckle under me as they do when I pull myself up on the door knob in the front room. My elbows don't twinge even after all the side sleeping I do. It's not that I'm usually happier on a futon than on a mattress: my thrashing sleep style is impeded by the futon's inertness, which is why I started sleeping on the mattress in the first place. I just hurt less now.
And the clincher is this: none of my pillows are the right height when I sleep on the mattress, while all my pillows are just fine on the futon. The solution, which I hope is the right one, is to buy a new firm mattress. That won't let me sink down as I do in the futon, enfolded and supported by all that REALLY HEAVY cotton stuffing. (Well, and foam core: quite a lot of it, IIRC.) But maybe I can trade supported for enfolded, and still roll over as is my sleeptime habit. Worth a try.
But there may be another factor at work. When I sleep on the front bedroom's mattress, my knees scream at me when I try to stand on them and my hips twinge as I roll over. *Possibly* I just had a very good massage on Sunday, but that hasn't happened for the last three or four nights. I can sleep happily without a pillow between my knees, or under them if I'm on my back. Though I have nothing to hold on to when I stand up, my knees don't buckle under me as they do when I pull myself up on the door knob in the front room. My elbows don't twinge even after all the side sleeping I do. It's not that I'm usually happier on a futon than on a mattress: my thrashing sleep style is impeded by the futon's inertness, which is why I started sleeping on the mattress in the first place. I just hurt less now.
And the clincher is this: none of my pillows are the right height when I sleep on the mattress, while all my pillows are just fine on the futon. The solution, which I hope is the right one, is to buy a new firm mattress. That won't let me sink down as I do in the futon, enfolded and supported by all that REALLY HEAVY cotton stuffing. (Well, and foam core: quite a lot of it, IIRC.) But maybe I can trade supported for enfolded, and still roll over as is my sleeptime habit. Worth a try.
