Sleeping Sickness

In January, I was given a BiPAP machine, a small unit that pumps an easy current of air through a tube, up into a mask that is suspended by straps that go around my head. I wear this "mask" (it's really just a small soft rubber nostril piece), fitted comfortably just in my nostrils, close my mouth and lie down to the slightly amplified sound of my exhalations. Now I knew after 20 years of exhaustion I wouldn't simply pop out of bed like a gymnast, but soon after I began to use the machine I noticed an incremental improvement in my wakefulness and an overall lightness in my mood.

Two months later, I dare say the thing is working. At 46, I might just be beginning to feel like "normal" people do. Having only known a rather exhausted, crabby outlook for the past two decades, I really don't know what to make of all this. In fact, I wonder if I might even like the new me, happy as I was to wallow in my cynicism. Even if one is in pain, sometimes one comes to rely on that pain to define themselves. If this marketable shift in my wakefulness increases, I might not have any more excuses for my lack of motivation. I might begin to have a positive outlook, consider the glass half full instead of, as Woody Allen said, seeing the glass full, but of poison.

Along with my body feeling better because of adequate restorative sleep, I might need to start to look at the world in an entirely different way.

Greco lives in Clifton, N.J.

© 2008