This all started a LONG time ago. Like when I was a helpless infant and my parents read somewhere that sleeping with a pillow was bad for your back. So they never gave me a pillow. Which meant I never learned to sleep ON a pillow.
For a long time this wasn’t really a problem. Occasionally I might get teased at slumber parties when everyone else crawled into their sleeping bags and pulled out their pillows and I HAD no pillow but other than that it didn’t come up much.
In college the dorm mattresses were basically like a large version of a plastic seat cushion, and about as thick and soft, so I stole the world’s flattest pillow from a boyfriend and used that for years. It was, no joke, about an inch and a half thick. It basically just made that end of the bed soft enough to lay my head on.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to purchase pillows I could sleep on (the kind you can flatten to nothing in the middle) but according to John 90% of the time I shove them off the bed within an hour of falling asleep anyway.
Why is ANY of this important? Well, because when I jack up my neck (usually by doing something like spending 7 uninterrupted hours in front of the computer, which is what I did this last time creating a photo book on Shutterfly) it usually takes the shape of the natural curve of my neck being lost. Which is a problem. It causes backaches, headaches and general misery and requires many trips to the chiropractor to fix it.
When we got our new mattress last month and were getting things free to go along with it I got one of those tempurpedic pillows that are supposed to be so great. But it wasn’t comfortable. So I didn’t use it. I asked my chiropractor about it and he said, “This it away!” Because, apparently, they are only good for your neck if you are sleeping on your back with your head perfectly in the middle. If you slide down or roll over onto your side it is BAD for your neck. So I tossed it into the closet when I got home and was really glad I hadn’t paid the $100 or whatever regular price for it.
But this still left me with no pillow. Our new mattress is really comfy but I could tell I still needed something to support my neck. And supporting the curve in my neck my chiropractor is beating the hell out of me to put BACK seemed like a good idea. I noticed that the chiropractor had pillows for sale. They look like regular pillows except there is a rectangle stitched into the middle creating an indentation. I asked, he swore how fabulous they were for your neck and I gave him $40 (well, actually I gave the receptionist $40). So that night I tried to sleep on it and by the time John finished reading to me my neck was starting to hurt and I was deeply uncomfortable. So I flung it to the floor and John SIGHED and I was like “well, I think it would make a really nice cat bed” and he sighed a few more times and asked if I would please STOP buying pillows I don’t use.
So I told the chiropractor about this yesterday and he told me that it takes at least THREE WEEKS to get used to the pillow that I should start out just trying to lay on it for 15 minutes, then move up to half an hour, then an hour and EVENTUALLY I will be able to sleep on it. So I now am TRAINING to sleep on this damn pillow.
Last night: I managed to lay on it almost half an hour before hurling it across the room. YAY ME.
