What It Feels Like Here in Limbo

I used to know that I would be happy if I could just relax. For even a few minutes. I would sit on the sofa and read my book, lazily. I would watch TV beside Tracy, calmly, quietly. If I could only be still.

What kept me from this was terrible restlessness. A friend recently asked me what that feels like, and I decided I could describe it only as like when the doctor bangs your knee with a hammer to test your reflexes. Your foot jumps up. You can’t help it. When I’m restless, I have to move. If I’m lucky, it’s one leg. Most of the time, it’s my whole body.

I got as close to relaxing as possible by knitting while I watched TV. Eating nuts while I read. Pacing while I talked on the phone. There was no such thing as sitting still, but I could do the things I would do if I were still.  

Now, on methadone, I’m the punchline of some kind of cosmic joke. I still feel maybe a half an hour of restlessness when I am forced to be still, say, in the passenger seat of the truck. Most of the time, though, when I try the superhuman feat of stillness now, I drift off to a light sleep. And I mean that: most of the time when I try for stillness, I fall asleep.

Dr. Handsome Metaphor (aka my sleep psychologist) said that I used to chase sleep like it was a runaway dog. Now, I’m the running dog, and sleep is the master chasing me. Always nipping at my heels. Sometimes taking a full bite. 

These days, I have to sit on the toilet to pee, like, for a long time. Methadone messes with the nerves of your bladder, and, often, I know by the clock it’s time to pee, so I go give it a try even though I don’t feel like it. I’m like a toddler about to go on a roadtrip. Problem is, as I sit there trying to relax enough to let the pee that must be in there dribble out, I find myself—you guessed it—falling asleep. 

Only I would call it a health improvement to go from not being able to sit still so I can read to not being able to sit still so I can pee.  I haven’t actually fallen off the toilet yet, so go me. 

If restless legs syndrome feels like involuntary muscle movements (is, in fact, involuntary muscle movements), what does it feel like to be so sedated by such strong medications that you fall asleep on the toilet? 

I’m outside in an Adirondack chair, reading, in the sunshine. I’ve just come back from biking to the kayak, then taking the kayak out on the river and lake, then putting the kayak back in our rental rack and biking back home. It didn’t leave me winded, but I’m glad to have nothing to do in the sun. It’s warm on my bare skin. Banjo is lying in the grass, rolling occasionally and groaning with pleasure. The house sparrows are wrestling and chirping in bundles under the bird feeder. Squirrels run above my head, along the top of the privacy fence behind me. At my feet, the new fountain trickles water in the tiny pond. Oh, wait, where is Banjo? Right there in the grass. Good girl, she is so happy with this sunshine. Is that a house wren I hear? Ack! My kindle has gone blank; I must have fallen asleep. Where is Banjo? There she is in her bed, good. I know I was dreaming about having forgotten to feed the fish, and they were starving. No, those were fish in an aquarium. These fish beside me are in the small pond, and I don’t feed them; they eat the algae that grows in there. I have to get up to feed the baby! No, that was a dream. Where’s Banjo? Where was I in my book? I need to change the settings so it doesn’t go to sleep so often. God, I was dreaming I was taking forward. That’s a chickadee on the feeder; I sure wish they would build in the bird house. Those crows were in my dream, weren’t they? Man, this chair is uncomfortable. How did I get end up sitting on my foot? I need to get up because I hate this in-between state. Wait, where is Banjo? There she is, still in her bed. What time is it? I’ve been sitting here for only ten minutes.

What it feels like is as if I’m a thick liquid, stuck between two panes of glass. I can see the land of the living, of the awake, through one pane, on one side of me. I can see the land of the asleep through the other pane. I can’t break through to either; I stay stuck in between, with these two hard panes of glass between me and release into somewhere, anywhere, that’s not the limbo I find myself in, nearly all the time I’m not moving.

My type of restless legs syndrome is an affliction for life that only gets worse as you age. I’m lucky to have found a provider to prescribe methadone for me and that my health insurance covers it. I’m unlucky that it’s classified so I have to get a new prescription for it every month; I cannot get it refilled; I cannot get it out of state; I cannot travel.

It’s summer in Madison! So, lots of things to do to keep me active, moving, away from limbo. There are five music festivals that local neighborhoods use as fundraisers within walking distance of us. They are free street festivals with bands we know and enjoy and plenty of food and beer trucks. Every Friday night is a bluegrass band downtown in front of the fancy Edgewater Hotel; we can bike to that. Our kayak rack rental is renewable every year; I bike to that wearing my paddle across my back. I also bike to two exercise classes, wearing my yoga bag also across my back. Each weekend night is the beer garden by the lake, run by the botanical garden. Tuesday nights they have a band. Most Tuesday nights, though, we play trivia with old friends at a tap room that we walk to. It’s all wonderful.

Tracy told me that everyone is so busy in Madison cramming fun into the summer because winter is so long, so cold, so barren. People explode in the summer, and they sure do.  (The fun I had with visitors in Madison is for another post!)