The Streetlight Problem I Solved With a Sleep Mask

I spent thirty years at a paper mill in Green Bay on rotating shifts, and my body never did learn what night was for. When I retired two years ago I figured the sleep would come back on its own. It did not. For a full year I woke three or four times a night, and I could not tell you why.

So in October of last year I sat down at the kitchen table with a yellow legal pad and wrote out five things that were waking me or wearing me out. Noise. Light. A sore neck. Overheating. Dark mornings. That was the whole list, in that order, and nothing else made it. Then I bought five products in one Amazon order and set them all up that same week.

I am writing here about the second thing on the list, the light, because it is the pettiest of the five and it beat me for a solid year. What finally did the job was a mask from Manta Sleep with cups that sit around the eye instead of flat against it.

The bedroom window faces the street. There is a streetlight directly outside it, and the curtains are plain, thin things that stay up because Joyce likes the window. She has never once complained about that light. She sleeps through it. I did not.

Before the list I had bought a flat foam eye mask from the drugstore during that bad year. It let light in right at the bridge of my nose, and it slid up the back of my head overnight. I would wake at two in the morning with a bright seam across my face and no idea where the mask had gone. That mask is in a drawer now.

What I ordered in October was the Manta Sleep mask, the Original. I am not going to pretend I got it right the first night. It took me two nights to figure out where the eye cups needed to sit, and about a week before I stopped thinking about it at all.

It took two nights to place the cups and about a week before I stopped noticing the mask. Then the streetlight stopped being the reason I woke up.

Here is the part that matters if you have the same problem. A flat pad presses on your eyelids and still leaks at the edges. The Manta Sleep mask sits on a soft cup around each eye instead, so the seal is around the socket and not on the eye itself. That is what got rid of the seam of light across the bridge of my nose.

It is adjustable, the cups detach, and the closure is a hook and loop strap. Those three things are the whole reason it worked for me. I am a side sleeper, so I could set it up so the cup on the pillow side was not digging in. It has never slid off or come off on its own in the night. I have not once woken up with it around my ear.

The honest gripe: if you sleep on your side, the cup on the pillow side can press a little until you get the pillow set right. That took me a few nights to sort out too. And I wash it by hand in the sink about once a month, which is a small chore I would rather not have, but it is a small chore.

One more thing, and I will be straight about it. Most nights now I take the mask off when I get up around four for the bathroom and I leave it on the nightstand. It stays off until morning. Which means on most mornings my wake-up light has a clear shot at me, and that is how I meant it to work. On a morning I sleep straight through with the mask still on, I get the bird sound instead of the sunrise. The two do not fully cooperate. I have made my peace with it.

What changed is the front half of the night. The streetlight is still out there. The curtains are exactly where they were. But the light is not what wakes me anymore, and going back to a flat foam pad would feel like going back to a folding chair.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Give it two nights before you decide. That is the thing I would say first, because the first morning the cups were pressing in the wrong spot. You have to find where they sit on your face, and that is a five minute job, not a five second one.

If a doctor has told you there is something wrong, do that first. I went to mine during that bad year, before the list. She looked me over and found nothing that needed treatment, and that is the only reason I felt free to go buying things off a legal pad. If sleep trouble is dragging on for you, see yours. I am a retired mill supervisor, not a doctor, and I am not going to play one.

And keep your expectations where mine were. This is one item on a list of five. It handles light. It will not handle a furnace that thumps when it kicks on, or a neighbor's pickup starting at five in the morning, and it certainly will not fix a neck. Those were separate lines on my pad and they got separate answers. If your problem is light, though, and you have been fighting it with a flat mask or a folded t-shirt, this is what I would hand you across the fence.