Sleeping pills

Wife takes sleeping pills before she goes to bed.  OK, fine, she takes so many other kinds of pills that what's one more?  She says she can't sleep without taking them.

Only why does she also take them in the morning?

I think it is force of habit -- maybe -- but if it is then this is a habit that is impermeable to reason or common sense.  When she wakes up in the middle of the night to pee, she always takes another sleeping pill before going back to bed.  It's absolutely routine.  She fears -- can it be fear? -- that she won't be able to get back to sleep without it.  And she fears -- again, is that it? -- not being able to get back to sleep.  So she reaches for a pill.

Only, ... what about this morning?  Son 2 (who has been home on Christmas Break since Saturday) had an early doctor's appointment, so she was planning to get up at 6:00 am to get dressed and breakfasted in time to take him.  She set her alarm expressly last night before turning in.  And then she got up to pee this morning at 4:47. 

I happen to know the time because she rolled over just before getting up and poked me in a way that woke me sharply and immediately.  (At the time I thought it must have been deliberate, because she often pokes me like that if she deems I am snoring too loudly.)  Anyway, I woke up and saw the clock.  And a couple minutes later she got up and toddled into the bathroom.

When she finally came back it was nearly 5:00, and I was still irritated at having been (so I thought) deliberately awakened.  So I rather unkindly got up, turned on the light, and suggested we both get up.  This way she'd have more time to get ready in the morning, which always takes her amazingly long anyway.  She was understandably displeased, but went along with it.

So here we were getting going a little after 5:00 in the morning.  I got dressed.  She started making coffee ... grumbling but perfectly coherent.  Within a half an hour, though, she was staggering, unable to focus, and unable to speak clearly.  I asked her what was wrong and she explained -- as peevishly as she could manage in her stupefied state -- that she had taken a sleeping pill when she had gone to pee.

What the fuck??  It was nearly 5:00 then ... had she forgotten that she was planning to wake up anyway in just over an hour?  Admittedly it was still dark -- hell, it's winter -- but how hard would it have been to glance at the same clock I saw?  Or the big clock on the wall immediately to her left in the bathroom ... actually in front of her while she was on the toilet?  How hard would it have been to reflect that the pill would take thirty to sixty minutes to dissolve in her stomach, and so would only start taking effect about the time she wanted to get up anyway?  Or a little before, sure, but there is no possible way it could have worn off by the time she wanted to get up ... no way it could do anything but incapacitate her.  How could she not see this?

But this is normal.  I don't even say anything about it any more, because I know she is incapable of understanding.  I could say "Don't take a sleeping pill if it is within two hours of when you want to wake up," and she will say "But then I won't be able to get back to sleep."  Whatever I say at that point -- for example, "Maybe so but in that case you just have to live with it because if you take the pill you will never wake up on time" -- she'll answer "But I have to have my sleep. I'll get sick if I don't get enough sleep."  And then she will alternate those two answers from there on out, no matter what else I might try to say.  She will not -- cannot? or is not willing to? -- understand that there can possibly be a bigger picture than the one she has painted for herself that says:

1. If it is bedtime, you have to go to sleep so go to step 3.
2. If you wake up and it is still dark then you have to go to sleep so go to step 3.
3. Any time you have to go to sleep (such as in steps 1 or 2), take a pill.

I cannot tell if this is willfulness or stupidity.  But there are certain conversations where she is defended by a mental wall that is just impermeable.  This is one of them. 

So in the end I gave her a shove in the direction of bed and she fell back asleep.  Son 2 got up and asked why Mom wasn't up yet, adding "Is she plastered on drugs?"  I rolled my eyes and sighed Yes.  So I took him to his doctor's appointment and got to work late.  They spent the day decorating the tree and it looks very pretty.  And now she is in bed  again for the night, having taken her nightly dose of medications, including her sleeping pills.  And so it goes.