ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
What the hell is wrong with me? I was so exhausted all day because I only slept for 4 hours (a very unrestful sleep at that), and my brain has felt awful all day, making me extremely irritable and unable to cope with stress. And yet, I've been lying in bed for almost 2 hours and can't fall asleep! I even took a dose of cold medication which is supposed to make you drowsy about an hour ago. While my sinus problems have cleared up, I'm still wide awake.
This happens 2-3 times a week. I can't take it anymore. Insomnia is literally driving me insane.
At first, I had some stuff on my mind that was bothering me. But after about 30 minutes, my mind went blank and all I could think about was the word "sleep". But to no avail. No matter how many times I tried my old tricks of thinking the word "surrender" as I breathe in and out, concentrating on the sound of the fan, relaxing every muscle in my body, or ordering my mind to shut down ("Or else, stay up and solve differential equations," I tell it... to motivate it to stop trying to function), nothing worked. NOTHING!!!!!!!
I don't know what to do. I'm going to the sleep center in a couple of weeks to get checked out for sleep apnea, because matt said that when I sleep I choke/gasp for air, wake up for a second, go back to sleep, and repeat the cycle a few seconds later. I'm thinking that if I have sleep apnea it might explain why it's so hard for me to fall asleep and so hard to get a restful night's sleep, as I often experience the feeling of being half-awake (i.e. asleep and dreaming, but still conscious of what's going on around me). I was reading about studies of birds, and how they can apparently will half of their brain to sleep while the other half stays awake. One study literally lined some ducks up in a row and showed that the ducks on the ends kept one eye open and that side of the brain awake, while the ones in the middle shut their brains down fully. So it's hypothesized that when humans are "half awake" it's because of some primitive instinct to protect oneself from the dangers of the outside world (which could now simply be a response to stress). Also, it was shown that ducks will keep half their brain awake so that they can sleep underwater and come up for oxygen during the sleep cycle. So, if I have sleep apnea, maybe half of my brain is staying awake so that I don't stop breathing for good.
Years ago, when I had a seizure, I had an EEG done. It showed that during sleep my brain "sparks", which is why I'm more likely to have a seizure in my sleep than while awake. I'm not sure what a brain "sparking" means... but I think it has to do with an increase in electrical activity in my brain. So maybe it's something genetic too, something about the way my brain is wired, that makes it so hard for me to fall asleep and to stay in a stage of sleep where I'm not conscious of the fact that I am in my room sleeping while x, y, and z are going on around me.
But none of this solves the problem for tonight. My brain is too mushy to possibly just start doing work, and yet, if I can't sleep then I'm likely to continue feeling like total crap and not be able to do it tomorrow either. There just doesn't seem to be anything I can do. If I watch TV, read a book, or do anything that involves having a light on, that's likely to stimulate my brain even more and keep me from sleep. And yet, lying in the dark for hours and hours on end is driving me insane and making me even more anxious about falling sleep. Often it gets to the point where I will actually start to feel my brain shutting down (a really weird feeling, by the way), but as soon as I become aware of this the process stops and I'm wide awake again.
As you can see, I'm very aware of the strangely inconsistent power I possess over my consciousness. I can easily recall and manipulate dreams, because I'm often half-awake when I experience them. However, sometimes my half-awakeness actually makes things worse. For instance, my alarm will go off, which on some level I'm aware of, and yet somehow the un-awake part of my brain will be unable to fully process this and so the time of day just ends up getting incorporated into my dreams-- it's like I'm totally aware that the numbers flashing on the screen are indicative of the time of day, but for some reason I'm unable to fully process why the damn object is beeping at me... I forget it's an ALARM clock, and so it becomes something else in my dream. Also, with the exception of the 2-3 nights a week when I suffer from insomnia, I can literally talk my brain into falling asleep and feel it happening. Usually when this happens I am aware of it, at least at the beginning. I feel my body becoming paralyzed, and I feel my brain becoming numb as well... I often even feel the chemicals shooting through my head. This sensation can last from anywhere from approx. 1-3 minutes before I either actually fall asleep, or my awareness stops the process altogether.
No one I've talked to really understands any of this. Some people have experienced the half-awake thing and the outside world being processed by the brain but only to a certain extent, but nobody I know has any idea what I mean when I say that I can feel myself falling asleep and that it strangely takes a lot of conditioning to keep my awareness of it from interfering with the process.
And then there are my dreams themselves-- which cause me almost as much anxiety as my waking life. I rarely have a "good" dream... almost all of them consist either of being abandoned by the ones I love (usually Matt), or being chased by some sort of deformed human or other-worldly creature. I can usually change the immediate circumstances of the dream, but not the big picture. If, for instance, I'm dreaming that Matt has left me somewhere, I can bring him back to me in my dream... but it's only ever temporary.... in the end, he leaves me again and the dream essentially repeats itself but with new circumstances. There's this sense of inevitability, of wanting very much to change my dream fate and thinking I can do so, but ultimately not being able to escape whatever the main theme of the dream is. It's very scary for me, because although I welcome spontaneity and losing some control, I ultimately feel the need to have control over the basic form my life takes. The impotency of the control I have in my dreams has frightening analogues to my real life.
Ultimately, I'm probably too fearful for my own good. I'm bold and take chances when I least expect that I will (and often when it matters most), but in general I'm quite timid and on guard all the time. It's fear in some sense that seems to keep me from sleeping. And it's fear too that keeps me from brushing my teeth as often as I should-- you see, every time I brush my teeth (since I was about 15), my stomach convulses violently (sometimes to the point where I throw up) and so I absolutely dread having to brush my teeth.
Well, there's nothing more to say. This has been enlightening. I guess I never realized how much fear controls my life... but now that I've realized it, maybe I'll have an easier time getting to sleep.