Can't Get Back To Sleep

Here is what has been happening. I get home from work and do some work around the house and get some exercise. We settle in and perhaps watch a little tube, perhaps read a bit. Invariably, I find my way to the other end of the bed near the tube so the volume can be lowered, thereby allowing my better half to fall asleep unfettered.

There is this moment that occurs next where I find myself turning on my side, my face directed away from the set. It is at that moment that I have given myself over to sleep. I would guess not a minute goes by after that before I am sound asleep.

Some time after that, beyond the time when the timer on the tube shuts off the set, I move back to the other end of the bed and crawl under the covers.

This should be it for the night. Not too long ago, it was. These past several nights, or mornings, some event has happened that awakens me a few hours before it is time to get up. Some nights it is a trip to the can. Other nights it is my partner repositioning herself enough to stir me from sleep.

Once I am awake. That is it. I am done for. I slip in and out of slumber right up to the time the alarms sound. That is the signal for my body to enter the deep sleep I craved two hours earlier.

At this point, the sounds of morning edition on NPR intermingle with one dream or another and I find myself suspended in some ethereal non-reality where I am trying to solve foreign problems that I have no clue about. The logic of these problems makes no sense to me either.

I am aware that the explanation of many dreams is it is the unconscious mind's way of resolving issues of the conscious mind. I am also aware that writing these dreams down before even getting out of bed; or recording them can be helpful in solving whatever issues they are about. I am aware of these things but have found myself doing nothing about them for many years.

The feelings associated with these dreams and these periods of insomnia are unpleasant. I have felt despair, discomfort, fear and uncertainty. The problem is, I have no idea what is triggering these fears.