I couldn't sleep for a long time. Now I can.

This year, I am thankful for the ability to sleep. Because until earlier this year, I hadn’t slept well for most of a decade. And it was killing me. Let me tell you a story...

I trace my years of bad sleep back to the surgeries I had in 2011. My already-bad nasal passageways were messed up even more by a bad attempt to shove an oxygen tube up them before the second surgery, with the result that almost no air got through afterward. (I was a mouthbreather by necessity.) I never really recovered from those surgeries -- my torso is broken -- and my sleep was the worst outcome of all: During my last years in Philly, I would fall asleep at work (humiliating -- I even fell asleep during a cop corruption trial in front of colleagues) or wake up in my home at night having sleptwalk around the place. A couple of times I woke up because I was accidentally injuring myself.

And the exhaustion was total.

My life felt awful. My ability to hold a regular job, instead of freelancing, felt awful. (Spending eight hours in an office was an ungodly challenge.) My blood pressure and weight ballooned. Depression set in. I couldn’t read a book or watch a movie without falling asleep. Everything was a struggle.

A nasal surgery a couple of years back helped restore some function -- I haven’t sleptwalk in a couple of years -- but honestly -- I entered 2020 ready, and maybe even willing, to be done. To die. It was that bad. It had been years since I slept more than about two hours at a stretch, and even that sleep was nastily oxygen deprived.

I took a sleep apnea test the night of the Iowa caucuses. It came back how I expected, but with a discouraging result: The CPAP machine they tried to use on me was impossible. I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t keep it on for more than a few seconds at a time. I felt like I had run out of options.

Only, I hadn't.

One weird thing about the pandemic lockdown. They made me reset. I stopped eating out much. The result: No more fried foods. The reflux that had been a regular part of my life for years just ... kind of disappeared. And the anxiety made my heart palpitate a bit, so I stopped drinking coffee. And I adjusted my sleeping arrangements to prop my upper body up a bit so that my sleepy breathing is better. 

And sometime over the summer, I realized I'd had a few good nights of sleep. That I wasn't waking up all the time.

That I felt ... rested.

There is something of a virtuous feedback loop to all of this. Not being exhausted and out of oxygen has made it possible for me to exercise better than I have in a long time. Starting in August, I regularly walk two miles a day. When the year started, that would have been beyond me.

So the weird thing for me about 2020 is that I arrive at Thanksgiving more personally hopeful about my ability to live than I have been for years. I am a better father and husband than I was, I think. Not so crippled by depression, or an inability to walk more than a block without needing to find a seat. I am not all the way back -- and honestly, I probably won't get there. But I am a lot further back than I expected to be. I'd lost hope. Now I can sleep again. And everything about me is better for it.