how to fall asleep when you have a severe cold and an ex-boyfriend visiting
1. even though it grosses you out, make a large glass of chamomile tea with lots of hot milk, and drink it while you read email. as the tea steeps, the milkwater turns a disturbing pale yellowish brown. the taste of it is rather disturbing as well, but you drink it anyway. it’s friday night, midnight, and you’re very tired.
2. go to bed. leave the kitchen christmas lights on so he won’t have to fumble around in the dark when he gets back. set your alarm for noon. it’s okay to sleep that late, since you’re sick. get under the covers with a book; plan to read for awhile until your eyes won’t stay open; until you begin to have waking dreams about the words writhing on the page. after all, it’s how you fall asleep every night.
3. read.
4. blow your nose. look at the tissue. eww.
5. read some more. read for a long time.
6. even though you’re still totally awake, give up reading and turn off the bedside lamp. maybe if you lay really, really still, you’ll fall asleep. you’re not used to sleeping with the kitchen christmas lights on, and the orangey glow is distracting. it’s one a.m. you wonder if you’ll wake up when you hear him come in. living alone, after all, has made you accustomed to total darkness; to dead silence. you’ll probably wake up. you’re sick, though, so maybe you won’t.
7. blow your nose.
8. try sleeping on your left side. try sleeping on your stomach. try tensing and relaxing each of your muscles in turn. count how many tables there are on the floor at work, and divide them by seven waiters, by six, by five. five waiters would get five tables; seven would get three and a half. the sheets are cold. it’s two a.m.
9. you hear the door open at three a.m. because, after all, you’re still awake. you listen as he locks the top deadbolt but not the bottom one, puts the keys on the counter, and takes off his shoes. “i’ve been trying to sleep for the past three hours,” you call out, propping yourself up in bed.
“really?” he says from the living room. “why?”
“i don’t know,” you say. “i’m wide awake. how was your evening?”
he comes in and sits on the bed, taking his jacket off and throwing it on the floor. as he tells you about seeing his old friends, tells you about how much they’ve changed, you think about how it used to be with the two of you. about how different everything was the last time he slept in your apartment. he’s changed, too; his hair’s blonder now, his clothes more stylish, his mannerisms altered. but even as he stretches out on the bed and plays affectionately with your hair as he talks, you’re not bitter or sad or even the least bit nostalgic. you’re instead glad that things worked out the way they have, glad that he’s still in your life, glad he’s not your boyfriend.
10. blow your nose.
11. four a.m. take two benadryl, hoping they’ll knock you out. as you get back into bed, you hear him flop down on the futon in the living room. “goodnight,” you say, rearranging your sheets and pillows and settling in.
“night, ali,” he says.
12. maybe if you lay really, really still, you’ll fall asleep. listen to the swoosh of cars on the street, the drunken voices of people walking by, the enormous crash of someone throwing what sounds like a garbage bag full of glass bottles into the dumpster in the alley. lay on your right side. your left side. your stomach again, this time without a pillow (after all, that’s how babies sleep, and they seem to do okay). nothing. it’s five-thirty a.m.
13. take a sedative. pass out.
