My love/hate relationship with naps

I never liked naps as a child. I mean, who *does*, right? You could be up doing things and grownups want you to lay down? What’s WITH that?! There’s stuff to do! Books to read! Playtime to have! Dogs to play with! Swimming pools that need splashing in! Who wants to stay inside on the couch?!

Then when I got to the age where I might start to appreciate a little nap, I could see the benefit, in theory, but my god, it was hard enough to wake up *once* during the day, so to wake up *twice*???? Ugh. Nobody got time for that. If I’m going to lay down and close my eyes and lose half an hour of time and need a cup of coffee after that to get moving, I might as well just skip the nap and have the damn coffee.

Still, there were times when I was just flat-out exhausted, and would fall asleep where I was. Usually on the last day of the work week, when I didn’t have to be at work the next day. For a long time I worked weird, heavy retail hours, and there was about a three-month period when I would open on a Sunday and have Monday off, and I would come home by about 6 PM, fall asleep on the couch, nap for about three hours until about bedtime, and then just slime off to bed and sleep for another nine or ten hours. Retail will do that to you, man. Still, I’d call that less of a nap and more just, like, going to bed early.

The only time I’ve really liked naps was two years ago, when I broke my finger and was on heavy painkillers. But did I really like the naps? Or could I just not fight them? Oxy makes you sleepy! I do not grok people addicted to Oxy who can still function. I did not like being so sleepy all the time, but also could not stop myself from being sleepy. I could have a complete conversation with you, totally present for it, lucid, awake, everything – and if you looked away from me for longer than about 60 seconds you’d turn back and I’d be out like a light.

(OK, so, being psychology-minded, I do actually understand addiction, I’m not saying it’s not a real thing – like a conspiracy of cartographers – but for the purposes of my little vent here, I’m really more saying that knowing how I can not function on heavy painkillers I do not understand how there can be high-functioning famous people who turn out to have heavy painkiller addictions and everyone is surprised and nobody was like, “well, I figured, what with they’ve been napping for the last seven years straight.” No. It’s always really hard-working people. Do they also have coke addictions? To keep them from napping?)

Same thing these last few days. Friday afternoon/late evening when I started to really hurt, I wanted to sleep to get away from the pain. Honestly, I should have known it was an abscess; it felt just like when I had that broken tooth abscess a couple of years ago. I did in fact wonder if it was, as it also hurt near the same area – but I’d move my tongue around or run my finger over my gums and I didn’t feel any abscess, so I thought maybe I was wrong. (Spoiler if you haven’t read my other post: I wasn’t wrong, I was just an inch or so off in my spacing.) Saturday at the hospital I kept falling asleep to get away from the pain. Sunday, even though I was on painkillers, since the abscess was coming back, again – I wanted to sleep to get away from the pain. Monday and most of Tuesday I napped, in a haze of Percocet. Wednesday I napped maybe half the day. Yesterday I didn’t take any naps, and this morning after almost three cups of coffee all I want to do is go back to sleep.

You could argue that hey, I just had sudden emergency surgery! I deserve to be a little worn out! But I call it less “surgery” and more “cut by some madman with a scalpel”. I mean, surgery, you get to prepare for, right? This was much more of a surprise. Hahaha, both to me *and* to him, I’m sure he wasn’t expecting all that screaming and crying. Heh.

Anyway. Naps. I might need one today. I’m probably going to need a second pot of coffee anyway, so, might as well get a nap in there, too.