Right Side

Owning survivorship has dulled my awareness of the battle wounds I’ve earned in life. The emotional scars are easy to hide for a while but they are starting to manifest to the very physical person I poses.

For years I’ve slept on my right side, with my head as far up against the headboard as I can possibly get it. I would fall asleep in one position and wake in the same position. Just a quirky habit, I thought. It’s been so many years that I’ve slept this way that I never questioned it. Some people sleep on their back while others prefer their stomach, isn’t this all preference? This is just who we are, right?

After 40 years of this habit the veins and arteries on my right side have started having some problems with the pressure all night. That’s ok, I will train my self to sleep on my back or my left side. The first night I tried positioning pillows to encourage me to stay on my left side but I kept waking up in a panic. I moved to lying on my back but night after night I laid there feeling unexplained horror.

What is wrong with me? I can doze of at the drop of a hat almost anywhere and I’d been so tired. Then I remembered how long I’d been sleeping on my right side. It wasn’t a concise decision but I trained myself to stay on my right side through the night when I was very young and that safety had become a part of who I am. On my right side, head to the top, I could sleep with my back to the wall, head to a wall. No matter what homeless shelter I was in, foster home, group home, or alley, if I could find a wall I had two sides protected when I was most vulnerable.