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Re-Start The smell of warm stale urine filled my nostrils, another night and another wet bed... that was the twelfth in a row. Actually, it was the eleventh, I’d had a piss-free night two nights ago but obviously it hadn’t lasted. For too many mornings now I’d woken (and I use that term loosely) up to find that I’d become a bed wetter. When you’re almost twenty this can, and did, come as a bit of a shock. Recently my sleep patterns have been all over the place and I’d say I more often than not merely dozed my way through the night hours. I put it down to the fact I was simply not getting enough sleep. My mind had become the receptacle for rubbish. For instance, I remember on that first night I suddenly got it into my head – How would a three year-old stand for Parliament? Stupid question I know but the thought swamped my mind and I just couldn’t let it go. Even when I tried to distract my thoughts with music, TV or reading (no less disruptive to my sleep patterns), eventually it came back to that same question and my mind would be in turmoil trying to figure out an answer. That was the first morning I woke up to a wet bed and that was just the start of my long troubled nights. I couldn’t get to sleep no matter how hard I tried some kind of nonsense mind-worm (the thinking man’s earworm) was working away and stopping me from getting comfortable in my own bed. ‘How long is a million seconds?’ Yes, that little mind-worm was the next to invade my head as I tried desperately to find sleep. It wasn’t that I wanted to know. I mean, I don’t care and yet, the question wouldn’t let me lie. I tossed and turned, pushed blankets off and pulled them back up when my legs felt cold. I lay on my front, side, back and the other side but could find no position comfortable without that irrelevant question battling in my head. I picked up a bedside book and read hoping that diversion would be enough. After ten minutes and a chapter later I thought it safe to return and try to settle down. I think I managed to drop off before my dream merged with reality and I began to think what I’d do if I wet the bed. I had no idea where this thought came from but suddenly realised that stupid thought had become a reality and I was soaked. Oh shit two nights running... Oh, and by the way in the end I had to look it up. Answer: One million seconds is 11 days, 13 hours 46 minutes and 40 seconds # I knew about ear-worms, when a piece of music lodges in your brain and you simply can’t think of anything else but this was more annoying... but had the same result. The next night my demented pre-sleep thought was – I wonder how long it would take me to count up to a million. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... No this is stupid, you can’t start... However, the idea has been planted and the brain is saying to give it a go. 1,2,3,4... (why was I trying to count quickly?) What was annoying about this is that because I hadn’t got much sleep the night before I’d gone to bed early. I thought I was tired but that bloody million count was plaguing me and I simply couldn’t shake it. Although, every time I looked at the clock, there had been a passage of time, I’d never quite fallen asleep, merely thought how ridiculous it would be to try and count to a million. It would be the stupidest of things to do to try and count – 1, 2, 3... The alarm was set as usual for seven o’clock so that blast of heavy rock woke me up with a start. So, although I must have fallen asleep at some point I didn’t feel I had slept at all. Then the surprise - not only was I sopping again but I was so tired I felt sleep had eluded me. Another morning with piss soaked into my bed, undies and sheets was a bloody awful way to start the day. Laundry facilities were not easily available as I was living in a bedsit and the nearest laundromat was a bus ride away but thankfully there was one near work. The idea of carrying pee-soaked stuff on the bus made sure I avoided doing so until I had no choice. By then my bedsit smelled a bit and even wrapped in a couple of plastic bin-bags there was no denying what I was carrying. I just had to bluff it out and pretend it wasn’t me. # Now I have to admit that I had slight (very slight) urinary problems before. I mean, I’d like to be able to say this was all new to me but in fact, when I was younger, I’d also occasionally needed a little padding. Not a great deal I must emphasise, however, leaks did happen but my thicker cotton underpants were able to keep embarrassing stains from public disapproval. Since I was little, a toddler in fact, and had grown out of having to wear a nappy, my little briefs still had a job to do. What I mean by that is... I could get to the toilet with no trouble; negotiate getting my willy free of my pants and pointing it in the right direction was OK. The problem I had was, no matter how much time I spent making sure every drop was where it should be, in the toilet, no matter how long I shook my tiddler to make sure no drops remained; as soon as I tucked it away there would be a little extra involuntary spurt, which took me by surprise. I wore slightly damp and stained underpants for years. An under-developed urinary tract had been the diagnosis and, as I got older, had been kept in reasonable check by medication. I stopped taking the medication a year or so ago and found that I didn’t need it because the leakage stopped and all was well... that is up until now. The problem is I have no idea why my brain seems to have changed from ‘no worries’ to worrying about every bloody thing, including how long it takes to count to a million. It makes no sense but my mind is full of this stuff nearly all the time, especially when I try to go to sleep. Here’s another one: How many balloons does it take to lift a human? This little query had my brain working on the principle that in the movie ‘UP’ it took loads of balloons to lift a house so... My head felt like it would explode trying to work out a problem I didn’t WANT to know the answer to. # I’d moved from my family home to this city to be near my girlfriend. She was going to be at university here and I didn’t like the idea of a long distance relationship so got a job with a well-known tyre repair shop not too far away from her campus. It’s a busy place and operates from 8.30am to 6pm six days a week and from 10am to 4pm on Sunday. It does more than just change tyres and so is incredibly demanding. There’s always a line of cars waiting from the moment we open and then it’s non-stop throughout the day... tyres, exhausts, wheel balancing, batteries, MOTs... you get the drift. You don’t get much time for a chat that’s for certain. Anyway, I moved about six months ago and actually really like the job, but a couple of months back the girlfriend called time on us. Without saying the actual words, it basically came down to the fact that she’d met someone in one of her lectures, they had so much more in common, and I was no longer needed... she could (and had) done better. The realisation that I was thick and no longer suitable boyfriend material must have hit me in a way I didn’t understand (naturally). So perhaps that’s why I think these thoughts - thinking them important and what University goers think about... I could be wrong. Anyway, I was here now and I didn’t think our paths would cross that often in a town this size so I thought I’d ‘just get on with it’ – a recommendation I always give myself when faced with a task. “Don’t think about it, just get on with it and get it done.” The thing is I don’t know how to stop the sudden night-time urination. I mean, I don’t even know I’m doing it until I wake up but, and this is the annoying part (as well as the smell and the moist undies) I don’t feel I sleep at all. It makes for incredibly long nights so it’s no wonder I’m always so damned tired. Anyway, the irony was, if indeed it was irony, the tyre firm didn’t put up with me being tired at work and fired me. # Without a job I had no money and was unable to stay where I was living. Jobs seemed few and far between and my boss refused to give me a gleaming reference so for the moment I was stuck. That was until mum said I should return home and she’d look after me. I told her I wasn’t a little kid but she said that didn’t matter what I needed right then and there was someone to care and a mummy (yes she used the word MUMMY, which I knew she was saying just to tease me but still felt a little weird) knew best how to care for her son. As it turned out, the landlord sent me packing after he’d had complaints about the smell of piss drifting into next door’s bedsit. I tried to convince him it was the plumbing but he called my bluff and said it was mine that needed sorting. So, I had little option but accept mum’s offer. Now, despite my best efforts at being a grown-up, I was twenty after all, I arrived home carrying all my belongings and a good proportion of which stunk of piss. Mum took one look (actually just a quick smell) and dumped my sheets and piss-stained clothes straight in the rubbish. The shake of her head as she tutted and looked me up and down made me feel like I did when a toddler and had accidentally wet myself. Oh hell, I think that stain on my pants might be fairly recent. “You young man,” she looked through the rest of my ill-packed cases, “are not equipped to deal with being on your own... and why is everything soaked for heaven’s sake I thought we were past all this?” She already knew that I’d been dumped by my girlfriend because that happened a few weeks ago and I’d told her but hadn’t explained why I’d been sacked. I really had a lot to tell mum but didn’t know how to go about it because it sounded so dumb and juvenile. I mean, not sleeping because you’re thinking of stupid problems... which leads to a wet bed... well, it’s just... childish. However, mum said she’d missed me whilst I’d been away and was happy to have me back. Even though I’d only been gone a few months my room had been changed. Despite my age, I’d left my bedroom like that of a teenager as I’d been too lazy (and too poor) to change the single bed, my football duvet cover or the posters on the wall. Now the walls were bare, my single bed was just a mattress and looked naked and empty, the furniture had been re-jigged a little and a lick of paint had made it seem quite clinical. At least mum hadn’t made it her sewing den as threatened. However, now I was back, and thanked mum profusely for letting me return, I promised that I’d find a job and sort myself out. She just hugged me and said “Welcome home sweetheart but first things first... if you’re staying then there will be some new rules”. ####