"You lack the season of all natures, sleep. "
So, I'm sure most people know by now that I've been having trouble sleeping. (That's a pretty big understatement, actually.)
It was so bad during November that I honestly don't remember a large majority of that month. I know that I did things, that I went to work and probably socialized with people ... but it's all pretty fuzzy.
So I've been thinking a lot about the effect that sleep (or lack thereof) has on a person, specifically, the effect that it has on me.
Sleep affects everything. Mind, body, everything. Without sleep, nothing works. Without sleep: I can't concentrate, I can't relax, I can't exercise, I can't focus on one task, I can't focus on multiple tasks, I can't eat because I'm either not hungry or I'm nauseous as soon as I do eat, I can't talk to people, I can't see straight. Without sleep, I don't function. Period.
Sleep and I have always been frenemies. Our relationship has been ... fraught. I tend to vacillate between sleeping too much and sleeping too little depending on my mood cycle.
When I was a kid, I loved sleep. In fact, I've always loved to sleep. I loved sleeping in, and loved the feeling of being comfy in bed and then falling asleep. It's a nice escape, a respite from the day's trials and tribulations. My mom had to put ice cubes in my bed to get me to wake up on the weekends. Or squirt me with a water bottle. My dad played very loud music (usually The Rolling Stones or The Eagles or something).
During my teenage years, it started getting ridiculous. I wanted sleep too much. I craved sleep. It was escape from the shit I was dealing with. (These are all very normal teenage behaviors of course, teens need more sleep than any other age group, and it's common to want to escape from the drama of high school. But with me, it went beyond that.)
So I decided to start messing with sleep. I stayed up as late as I could every night, trying to see what the absolute minimum amount of sleep I had to get in order to be able to function. I went with as little as 2 hours of sleep for a week straight and I think that was my limit. I started getting really paranoid and on the verge of hallucinating, so I abandoned that experiment.
(This was all during a period in which I was really mentally unstable, after all. So it was not like I was in my right mind and just decided not to sleep on a whim.)
Once I was right again (as "right" as I will ever be), I enjoyed sleep again. I still loved to sleep in, and probably slept too much. But it was nice sleep. Relaxing sleep. It was easy to get to sleep and I never had a problem with it.
Until now. (Or rather, recently.)
When my broken brain decides to assert its brokenness every now and then, one of the sure-fire indicators that I'm heading into not-so-fun territory is sleep.
It's not always that I can't sleep. (Sometimes it is, but not always.) It's that I can't get to sleep for hours on hours. I lay awake for long-ass time before finally drifting into something that somewhat resembles sleep. Sometimes I even get to actual-sleep territory, REM territory. Then I wake up. Usually at 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning. Sometimes I make it until 4. And then the process begins again. Sitting there trying to sleep and knowing that you only have a finite number of hours left before you have to get up.
That's where what I like to call "Edward Norton in Fight Club" syndrome starts. And it sucks.
This is where sleeping pills come in. I have noticed that while taking them, the sleep that I do get once I get to sleep is better. But I still wake up hella-early and hella-often. And it still takes me forever and a day to get to sleep in the first place. Progress? Maybe?
And now comes "The Plan" - I always have to have a plan. My plan to survive the rest of the year and avoid meeting Brad Pitt and bombing buildings is this:
1. Get all my stupid xmas shit done, now. I'm actually about 80% done. Go me.
2. Avoid thinking about or caring about the holidays until December 24th, since I'll have everything already prepared anyway.
3. Spend the rest of December figuring out how to fucking sleep.
4. Profit?
That's the plan. No Brad Pitt (as nice as that may be). No Robert Paulson. No bombing random buildings. No killing of random Scottish kings or wandering around sleepwalking with imaginary knives. (I've already done that whole "hurting yourself while sleepwalking" thing, and don't plan on repeating the experience.)
This is the plan.
It was so bad during November that I honestly don't remember a large majority of that month. I know that I did things, that I went to work and probably socialized with people ... but it's all pretty fuzzy.
So I've been thinking a lot about the effect that sleep (or lack thereof) has on a person, specifically, the effect that it has on me.
Sleep affects everything. Mind, body, everything. Without sleep, nothing works. Without sleep: I can't concentrate, I can't relax, I can't exercise, I can't focus on one task, I can't focus on multiple tasks, I can't eat because I'm either not hungry or I'm nauseous as soon as I do eat, I can't talk to people, I can't see straight. Without sleep, I don't function. Period.
Sleep and I have always been frenemies. Our relationship has been ... fraught. I tend to vacillate between sleeping too much and sleeping too little depending on my mood cycle.
When I was a kid, I loved sleep. In fact, I've always loved to sleep. I loved sleeping in, and loved the feeling of being comfy in bed and then falling asleep. It's a nice escape, a respite from the day's trials and tribulations. My mom had to put ice cubes in my bed to get me to wake up on the weekends. Or squirt me with a water bottle. My dad played very loud music (usually The Rolling Stones or The Eagles or something).
During my teenage years, it started getting ridiculous. I wanted sleep too much. I craved sleep. It was escape from the shit I was dealing with. (These are all very normal teenage behaviors of course, teens need more sleep than any other age group, and it's common to want to escape from the drama of high school. But with me, it went beyond that.)
So I decided to start messing with sleep. I stayed up as late as I could every night, trying to see what the absolute minimum amount of sleep I had to get in order to be able to function. I went with as little as 2 hours of sleep for a week straight and I think that was my limit. I started getting really paranoid and on the verge of hallucinating, so I abandoned that experiment.
(This was all during a period in which I was really mentally unstable, after all. So it was not like I was in my right mind and just decided not to sleep on a whim.)
Once I was right again (as "right" as I will ever be), I enjoyed sleep again. I still loved to sleep in, and probably slept too much. But it was nice sleep. Relaxing sleep. It was easy to get to sleep and I never had a problem with it.
Until now. (Or rather, recently.)
When my broken brain decides to assert its brokenness every now and then, one of the sure-fire indicators that I'm heading into not-so-fun territory is sleep.
It's not always that I can't sleep. (Sometimes it is, but not always.) It's that I can't get to sleep for hours on hours. I lay awake for long-ass time before finally drifting into something that somewhat resembles sleep. Sometimes I even get to actual-sleep territory, REM territory. Then I wake up. Usually at 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning. Sometimes I make it until 4. And then the process begins again. Sitting there trying to sleep and knowing that you only have a finite number of hours left before you have to get up.
That's where what I like to call "Edward Norton in Fight Club" syndrome starts. And it sucks.
This is where sleeping pills come in. I have noticed that while taking them, the sleep that I do get once I get to sleep is better. But I still wake up hella-early and hella-often. And it still takes me forever and a day to get to sleep in the first place. Progress? Maybe?
And now comes "The Plan" - I always have to have a plan. My plan to survive the rest of the year and avoid meeting Brad Pitt and bombing buildings is this:
1. Get all my stupid xmas shit done, now. I'm actually about 80% done. Go me.
2. Avoid thinking about or caring about the holidays until December 24th, since I'll have everything already prepared anyway.
3. Spend the rest of December figuring out how to fucking sleep.
4. Profit?
That's the plan. No Brad Pitt (as nice as that may be). No Robert Paulson. No bombing random buildings. No killing of random Scottish kings or wandering around sleepwalking with imaginary knives. (I've already done that whole "hurting yourself while sleepwalking" thing, and don't plan on repeating the experience.)
This is the plan.