There was a time in my life when I could sleep anywhere. If there was a way to recline I could easily fall asleep. Yes, I could actually fall asleep in a dentist’s chair. I loved sleep. Heck, I still love sleep, the problem is that sleep apparently doesn� t love me anymore and I can’t figure out why.

Of course the news these days is full of stories about how eight hours of sleep is vital to anyone and everyone and that you will be subjected to any and all manner of horrible diseases will befall you without sleep. There’s apparently some kind of hormone called melatonin that is released only during darkness. This makes me wonder about my dad who worked over twenty years at a factory and worked nights. He said he preferred working nights. Little did he probably know he was depriving his body of melatonin which is some kind of antioxidant.

I don’t know what any of this means, really. The word “anti-oxidant” has only become one that everyone in the world wants to talk about in recent years. What did people do before they had anti-oxidants to worry about? I suppose they worried about having too much blood an adding leeches to themselves.

I have made some changes in my life and stress can make people lose sleep. I was always able to shut those things out and just go to sleep. Man, I loved sleep. I often said if there was a job whose entire duties consisted of sleeping I would be the best there ever was. Not so much these days.

Of course they always tell you that if you have problems with sleeping over a long length of time you should see your doctor. Then again, have you ever seen those sleep studies they put people through? No wonder the people have trouble sleeping when you look at that. They have skullcaps on and wires coming out of their noses and their tongues hooked up to electrodes. Then they are asked to just fall asleep. Sure, like I always fall asleep with eighteen tons of machinery hooked up to my head. What do you think I am? The Elephant Man?

My grandmother has trouble with sleep apnea. At some point “snoring” turned from something humorous the Three Stooges did in coordination into something potentially deadly. I don’t know when this happened and no one cleared it with me. It is my suspicion that at some point, probably in the 80s because everything bad that happens to us now happens then including Van Halen reunions, a whole new medical field opened up and people started getting degrees in sleep and dealing with sleep. They quickly had to invent some sort of life-threatening problem and so they decided to attack snoring and turn it into something deadly instead of annoying. Of course if you suffer from sleep apnea or know someone who died because of it I mean no harm, I am just a smart-ass.

Anyway, my grandmother, who is in her 80s, and has been snoring most of her life, only recently was diagnosed with sleep apnea. What was their solution? She has to wear a diving helmet to bed. OK, maybe it’s just a mask, but as far as I am concerned it might as well be a diving helmet. How can anyone sleep with that thing on their face and head?

For me sleep always followed the same progression. I would lay back on my back and throw an arm over my eyes. I would then start to fall asleep. At some point I would have to roll over onto my stomach and then I would fall into deep sleep and dream. This is the kind of sleep the sleep experts like to call REM sleep, I think. I would then spend the rest of the night sleeping on my stomach. This is still pretty much the way I prefer to sleep but now I can also sleep on my side. I know this is riveting reading.

My point is that wearing a mask would be almost impossible for me. How do you sleep on your stomach when you are better equipped for diving on wrecks in the deepest ocean? Or maybe better prepared to enter a burning building to rescue victims of a house fire is another way to look at it.

For me the sleeplessness has been a relatively new thing. They, the infamous “they,” always say that if you experience this sleeplessness for more than a few weeks it could be a sign of something serious. The problem is they cannot tell you what that serious thing might be. They just tell you that you will die driving and that if you don’t get your melatonin fix every cancer is the world is going to set up shop in your body.

The problem with the medical field is that a doctor just cannot give you an absolute answer. The medical field is never one that is black and white. The only thing a doctor can really ever tell you absolutely is that at some point you are going to die. However, exactly how long it will take you to die they cannot tell. What you will die of they cannot tell but they can make suggestions. You an ask a doctor for a yes or no answer and they will smile and shuffle their feet and then give you another answer that really doesn’t answer your question.

I guess this is because in this day and age if you give out an absolute answer and then the other things happens people are more likely to sue. I know that out there are people who are itching to sue a medical professional. They get dollar signs in their eyes every time they set foot in a hospital or medical facility. This is too bad because it has created a world where you are tested for everything whenever you go to the doctor and the doctor only gives you vague ideas that leaves you with more terrifying images than just coming out with what the real problem is.

So, I toss and turn and then around two in the afternoon feel like I want to fall dead asleep. Whenever I get into bed it’s like my head just won’t shut off and I can’t get to sleep. There is nothing worse than having like a radio in your head because there is no way to shut it off. That’s the fun of being a writer when you are awake but when you want to sleep, it ain’t so much fun.

Of course there are more drugs than in Elvis’ medicine cabinet that a person can take to try to sleep. The last thing I need is another drug that I just know I will get hooked on. For crying out loud I almost get hooked on NyQuil whenever I get a cold. Now, a NyQuil sleep is like the sleep of the dead. That is goooood stuff.

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.