I am going to kill my husband if he doesn't let me sleep. He gets up at 5 to go to the methadone clinic. There is no reason for him to get up at 5. The place is open most days until noon, it's right around the corner from our house, and he is unemployed. He has nothing to do with his day except go to the methadone clinic.But that's not the problem. That's just a prelude. If he got up, got dressed, and left, it wouldn't be a big deal. He'd wake me up, but I'd just go back to sleep. In fact, that's what I do. He gets up, he turns on all the lights in the bedroom, and so I wake up. He leaves after about 15 minutes, and then I go back to sleep. No big deal. I'm flexible and forgiving, right?
But then he comes back about 15 minutes later, usually outraged about something. He will tell me all the things that are wrong. I tell him I don't care because I'm sleeping, and he usually yells at me. Then he gets back in the bed. By this time, the dogs are up, so he gets back up to let them out. I fall asleep. 15 minutes later, he gets up to let the dogs back in. They come in, excited from their morning peeing, and get back in the bed. It takes them about 10 minutes to settle down. I fall back asleep. 15 minutes later, he gets up to go to the bathroom, turning on lights and cursing about how he can't get back to sleep. He opens and closes doors, talks, turns lights on and off, yells at the dogs, talks some more, opens and closes a few more doors...for the entire 2 and a half hours that I'm trying to sleep after his initial rising to go to the clinic. He has been doing this for months.
Months.
I keep asking for him to do something different...maybe get his clothes together the night before so he won't have to turn on so many lights. Maybe sleep upstairs. Maybe I'll sleep upstairs. Maybe he could just not talk to me. Maybe he could go to the clinic a little later.
The most frustrating thing in the world to me is that I can't get heard. I can't make him understand how it feels to have your sleep interrupted every 15 minutes for the last two and a half hours of rest, every day, for months and months. Nothing I can do to adapt will work. I've tried sleeping upstairs, but he just comes up there to talk to me. I've tried asking him nicely and asking him meanly. I've tried going to bed earlier, and he will just open and close the doors on both ends of the night. This weekend, I purchased one of those sleep masks that make you not care if the lights are being turned on and off, and I bought some ear plugs. I showed these things to him last night and told him that I really, really needed to get more sleep, that I can't work 70 hours a week on only 5 hours of sleep each night, and that I had plans to use these tools to get more sleep, and that I hoped he'd respect my need for rest. He said he understood, and he would be quieter in the morning.
What did he do this morning? He did his normal thing, turning on lights, opening and closing doors...and it was ok. I heard him, but not enough fully to wake up. He stomped around for a bit looking for his keys, and I heard him a bit more, but I still didn't wake up. My tools were working. Yay.
But finally, when he couldn't find his keys after a few minutes of looking, he came and yelled at me and shook me so that I'd get up and help him. I guess I have magical-fucking-eyes that can see keys where he can't. I told him "No." I'm not getting up. I told him I need to fucking sleep. He insisted that he couldn't find the keys and that I had to help, and proceeded to make it impossible for me to sleep. So I got the fuck up and found the fucking keys that had fucking fallen behind the fucking table where the keys go.
I have no idea how to resolve this situation. I have an idea that might work...there's an extra room in the house that has a door that locks. I think I might move a bed into that room tonight and sleep in there with the door locked. I just really, really have to get some more sleep, and I don't know what else to do short of kicking him out.
Fuck!
Photo Credit: MsPsychosThoughts
