No Filter -- Sleepless Nights with the Big M

Mother Nature, in all her wisdom, sends a Hallmark card to women of a certain age. It reads:

Dear Mother/Sister/Wife/Partner:

You have done a fabulous job of raising your children, dog and cats. You have showed up at work and taken a lot of crap from your boss. You have paid your bills, with minimal overdue notices (for the most part), you’ve only had that one car repossessed and you handed over your car keys with a smile and joke to the repo man. You’ve drunk more than your fair share of red wine and eaten enough chocolate to form a melting bridge between continents. You have removed 17 pounds of lint from your drier.

Now I am going to reward you, dear woman, with Menopause. When you open the card there is an ominous noise that you recognize from Jaws. Although the card says Congratulations this isn’t congratulation music, this is shark attack music.

You burst into a cold sweat. Then a hot sweat. Then a cold sweat. You crave sugar, any kind of sugar, like a drug addict after a fix. You narrow your eyes at your husband thinking that he needs a complete make-over. Your darling children are nothing more than junk food eating, TV watching vampires who never pick up a dish. 

You suddenly have tons of time at night to form lists of everyone who has ever wronged you. You make lists, including that professor who looked down his nose at you when you said the movie Tess was as good as the book. Also, your first boss out of college who said to “get passionate” about your job, which was literally shuffling paper at an insurance company. Also, the Hollywood boss who ended up stealing a computer from the film production company and didn’t believe you’d missed work to have a mole removed, subsequently grabbing your shirt to “check it out,” because he’d had melanoma.

When your sleepless self functions or rather, malfunctions in society, you are like a newly released prisoner. The world looks strange and newfangled. You lose your filter, making jokes with total strangers who look at you as if you are speaking Swahili. Your kids laugh at you when you launch into a complete Wikipedia entry when  asked a simple question.

Your dog shoots you murderous glances because you are a worthless blob and it’s three hours past walk time. You make comments on Facebook that you think are hilarious because sleep deprivation unravels your already paper thin filter.

You take a sleeping pill and your husband wakes you up thinking that you’re already awake because he knows you’re now nocturnal and thanks to your tossing and turning, he is too. 

You get four hours of sleep and think, “What the hell. I’m going to write blog. Who cares if people hate it?”

Get some sleep people. You have so much to look forward to.

Ellyn Oaksmith is the author of funny, twisty contemporary novels such as Adventures with Max and Louise and Divine Moves. Please visit Ellyn at Ellyn Oaksmith.com, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest for more.