Kay is Everywhere

Ah, this is a hard time of the year. Everything new, turning green, full of optimism. And so were we this time last year. But no more. Everywhere I turn at the moment there are memories of Kay, too many to recount. Mostly passing snippets, flashes of memory. The pain of her loss is amplified by the season, by a passing of time that one cannot ignore.

I guess that it's not helped by the fact that, yet again, I'm not sleeping very well. Getting to sleep has been difficult for a while. But this week I have been waking up after a few hours of sleep and have not been able to get to sleep again. I've tried everything I can think of to relax, not nothing seems to work. And the problem is that the harder I work to try and relax, to try and find a way to fall asleep, the harder it seems to be. 

Last night took the biscuit: we went out with a group of friends for the evening and ended up getting home at 2am. I seemingly fell asleep pretty quickly but woke up at 3:30am and couldn't get back to sleep (I say "seemingly" because I my mind didn't switch off, I just eventually noticed that 90 mins had passed quickly). I started to get desperate because I had another extremely busy day facing me. At 5am I decided to take half a sleeping tablet, knowing that I would then lose the first half of the morning at least. But this seemed a better alternative than simply continuing to hope for sleep or trying to take on the day after 90mins of rest. Eventually, when the tablet cut in, I got an extra hour or two of rest and crawled out of bed around 9am. I felt absolutely terrible, but it was a beautiful day so I chose to cycle to the office. The exercise and fresh air blew the cobwebs out of my system and I managed to put in a useful 3/4 day. But if I thought it would do any good, I'd starting preying for a normal night's rest.

The homeopath tells me that my problem is that I'm thinking too much, that my mind is way too active. My initial reaction was that thinking is what life is about, not thinking = vegetable. But she recommended a book called "The Power of Now". To be honest I have reached a point where I'm prepared to grasp at straws to try and find and way to relax, to sleep, to find some peace, so I bought a copy of this book (the Kindle is so very cool) and I have started reading it. I have read about 20% so far, but it does seem to be a remarkable text. The "problem description" matches almost exactly with what I'm experiencing. However the solution that is proposed - switching off one's "thinking" by concentrating on the now - is as understandable to me as colour to a blind man. I'll have to carry on reading the book to see if there's further enlightenment, so far my attempts to put the principles into practice have failed miserably.

Tonight I think I'm going to take the easy option and take a whole sleeping tablet. I really need to get at least one good night's sleep after such an insomnious week.