“To sleep, perchance to dream”?

I never have identified with Hamlet. Actually, I find it hard to relate to most of Shakespeare’s characters, though I love to read his plays and feel them deeply. The closest I come to identifying with a character’s plight is Lady Macbeth. “Out, damned spot,” she tries to wash her hands clean of guilt. My life sometimes feels like I’m washing off guilt. Guilt for nothing. I plotted no murders, I’ve brought about no one’s demise, but I’ve been cruel in the way teenagers are cruel to one another, and I’ve been judgmental, the way children are judgmental to one another, and I have disobeyed when guardians tried only to help me. I try to find it in my heart to change those tendencies, but I only end up with “out, damned spot,” the guilt of soiled hands.

Monya suggested I needed to write about my constant struggle with my friend, lover, nemesis, sleep. I thought of Hamlet instead, and then Lady Macbeth and her guilty hands.

Sleep and I embrace so tenderly, so lovingly, at all the inappropriate times. I could nap all day, undreaming, resting, peaceful. In our new house, I say I take dog naps or cat naps. The cat has his own bedroom, and in there he has a futon. When I want to really stretch, I take to the futon, and my cat curls around me. I feel such comfort in his presence, he’s one of my dearest friends, and he purrs just to be near me. I can only smile; I’ve never learned to purr back.

A dog nap is a less serious nap because it is on the couch in the living room, the dog’s domain. The couch nap says, “I’m in the living room, not in a bed, and people will come in and out, so really I won’t sleep deeply.” Sometimes the dog sleeps parallel to me, on the floor, and sometimes I make a little nest with my legs and she curls into a space on the couch. The dog is happy to share my space and my time, and I feel the love too, but it’s nothing like the romance of the cat nap. The dog nap admits that I’m probably going to be dog-kicked and dog-wrestled, even though what I really want is the cat nap, though I feel too guilty to take it.

But I try not to surrender to the cat nap. The cat nap admits that I have a serious problem with sleep dysfunction. Every sleep specialist and self-help book gives me the rules of sleeping: no naps, restful bedtime rituals, no activities in the bed but sleep (and, you know, those other activities). These criteria are supposed to create the foundation of normal nighttime sleep. Normal nighttime sleep. I have to write that again. I get normal nighttime sleep maybe a few times a month. And so I give in to the dog naps and the cat naps, even though they’re forbidden.

Every nap I take has the tang of the forbidden. Delicious. Dangerous. A challenge to the rules. And I love to challenge the rules, and I love to taste the forbidden. Tell me “no,” and I hear “I dare you.” Tell me “no,” and I tell you “no” back. I am non-compliant.

I don’t tell my contrarinous lightly, like a rebellious teenager. Always, since a child, I took “no” as a challenge. My childhood best friend’s parents hated me, because no matter how many times they told me not to jump on the bed, not to sleep in the doll bed, not to bring my blankie over to sleep, I did anyway. “Don’t go backward down the slide.” “Don’t run away home without telling anyone.” “Don’t…” oh it’s too hard to explain all the don’ts. And as soon as they turned their backs, I immediately resumed the don’t-ing. I ran upright down the slide, I demanded to play my games and no one else’s, I bent my friend’s hula hoops in half playing too rough with them, I threw the ball on the roof of the garage to watch it roll down and catch it.

“Don’t nap.” Precious, precious nap. Like cookie dough ice cream when you’re on a diet. Hell, like raw cookie dough when you feel fat already. A Blizzard, a Frosty, a regular Coke, syrupy sweet iced tea. Daydreaming at work, skipping the gym, whipped cream on your latte, frozen dinners, chewing ice. All the don’ts, all the so-not-good-for-yous, every forbidden, cheat against yourself.

And that is a nap. A cheat against myself. I can’t cheat a doctor or a self-help book, but I can cheat myself, over and over again. A nap is falling down and skinning my knees when I insist on running down the slide. I dare the don’t, and I’m the one I hurt. It’s my guilt, against myself.

And the nap. Precious, precious nap. It feels like the only time I really sleep, but sleeping in the nap ruins my chance at sleeping during the night before it even began. I stack the deck against myself. Deal my nemesis nighttime sleep all the “draw fours” and “skip a turn.” Nighttime sleep laughs at me as my hand of Uno cards gets as big as a catcher’s mitt, with no hope of winning the game.

But the nap. Precious, precious nap. What better way to be healed from a night of bad sleep than a cat nap or its friend the dog nap? “Just a dog nap,” I say, “nothing serious, no commitment to a bed and pillow, no egregious violation of the rules, right?” Cheating. Don’t. Rebellion. Guilt.

It’s just a dog nap. “Out, damned spot.”