Voice of Will: Another sleepless night

2005-04-04 - 1:36 p.m.
So my wife has been in the States for the last 11 days, and right now she is on a 747 headed to Beijing, and then after a 17 hour flight, a 2 hour flight home.

for some reason whenever she is away for more than one night, I cannot sleep. Now in some instances this might be a good thing. But not this kind of sleepless night. I go to bed at 10 pm, and I just lay in our bed on her side of it, and I cannot stop thinking. Now I"m buddhist, I practice meditation all the time, and even it doesn't help. So I lay there, 11 pm, 12 am, 1 am , 2 am, and sometime between 2 and 3, I go to sleep. Have horrible dreams, and get up at 7 so the kids will have breakfast, and then I'm a zombie all day (the kids are wonderful, they usually let me go back to bed until about 9 am, but still I'm a wreck).

It would be nice if when I was that tired getting up would so something, but when I'm sitting up, I just veg. I cannot seem to focus my thoughts for more than about 10 minutes at a time. Last night at 1:30 I got the front desk people up so I could take awalk. (they lock us in, and have to unlock the doorfor us to go out. By contract we have freedom of movement, but sometimes I feel bad waking up the desk staff. Last night I didn't care.

It was surreal. Now we live in the Henan province, oldest and most populated part of china. You are never alone. When you go for a walk, you can always see or hear someone. Except after 11 pm on a college campus (the students get locked in/or out of their dorms if they are not in by 11pm), so I'm walking around campus, it is very dark, and no one is around. It was peaceful, and also very creepy at the same time.
One more night of bad sleep, and my love gets home. I think I can deal with it, I hope.

Will