Waking

I was thinking this morning of how strange it is to awake from sleep feeling distinctly unrested. After two years of discomfort, I can only look back on this feeling of rest and well-being and try to imagine what it was like. I remember waking slowly, and yawning, and stretching in bed, catching a few more minutes of coziness before getting up and starting the day. One of those things that we take for granted. As it is now, I can hardly wait, once I awake, to get out of bed so that I can move around and escape the pain and stiffness that has set in during sleep. The last thing you want to do is lie there for a little while longer. Or rather, you want to, but your body won't let you, because it no longer knows any such thing as a gentle, comfortable morning. In fact, one not only wakes in discomfort, but has the immediate sense of feeling exhausted from the pain that has resided in his body while the mind was unconscious. I suppose that's why I so often go back to sleep a couple hours after I rise in the morning, because, really, the body has rested very little at all. One of the best things about being unwell, I guess, is the genuine appreciation of how amazing it felt to be well.