4:41 a.m. I’ve been awake for a half hour now. Think it’s the third time I have wakened since going to bed a little after ten. This is so exhausting a frustrating. I think the perpetually disrupted sleep cycles may well drive me over the edge before my other disorders or even the stress of living in a world gone mad. I can’t battle this other stuff when my mind and body are constantly deprived of proper rest.
I have always had sleep disturbances, since I was 10 years old and it’d take me an hour or two of just laying in bed to get to sleep. Too much sleep, running on little sleep, flourishing with only six hours-as long as it’s solid- I am used to this facet of my disorders.
What has mutated and become unbearable is this wake and sleep and wake and sleep, and often wake in a panic for no reason where the spinning thoughts set in and by the time I get calmed down…it’s time for the alarm to get my kid up for school. Nine times out of ten no matter how tired or under rested, I am unable to go back to sleep even after she leaves. The wake and sleep cycle wasn’t exactly a new thing, I used to have to get up and go to the bathroom sometimes but I’d always trudge back along and once under the covers, go back to sleep.
Since having my daughter…Uninterrupted sleep is a foreign concept. I used to think it was new mom anxiety, checking to make sure the newborn was breathing, just marveling at her little sleeping body. Then she became a toddler and I was terrified she’d fall out of bed or get up and go decide to turn on a stove burner and so I couldn’t sleep more than a couple of hours at a time. After that she spent the better part of 3 years either sleeping in my bed or getting up within 2 hours of me tucking her into her own then fussingm til she could sleep in my bed.
Thankfully she has been sleeping through for the most part for about a year now with some isolated incidents and yet…she’s 8 and I still wake every two hours or so. And it’s not even like it’s because of bad dreams because when I am in these winter depressions, I welcome even bad dreams cos I can always wake from them. This depressive mental state is inescapable so I prefer sleep. Yet I can’t stay down more than a couple of hours at a time. It’s no wonder I am short tempered, grumpy, tired by 7 p.m. and unable to find energy to do much of anything.
I am bloody well exhausted and my psych nurse’s idea of helping is to prescribe some lame anti histamine that’s been cross labeled for sleep. I could have gotten benadryl. Not that those anti histamines work anymore, I have such allergies and hive inducing anxiety, I pretty much lived on benadryl and such for 30 years so it’s totally ineffective, not to mention it makes me loopy so if I do need to pee in the middle of the night, I walk into walls and stumble around. Useless.
I don’t want the answer is here.
I just remember someone I knew from my early social media dabblings (die die die, social media) and she’d be up for days then sleep for days but she’d always quip, “Sleep is for the weak” when she was on a manic kick.
Right now…I’d be just fine with some weakness if it meant even six hours of uninterrupted sleep for a couple of weeks. My tank is on empty and until it is refilled…I’m not sure any med regime is going to help with my mental state because one of the biggest issues is never experiencing a full healthy sleep cycle so my body and mind feel remotely rested.
Ninety minutes til the alarm goes off. Oh and even though I’ve eaten nothing for almost 24 hours, I now have reflux which really hurts and makes it even harder to focus on calming myself and at least catching another hour of sleep.
Who am kidding. By the time I calm the anxiety and racing thoughts, I’ll likely have 15 minutes before the alarm goes off.
8 years of this. And I can’t even say it’s my kid or my mommy anxiety. Something is very wrong.
For once, I want to be weak, if it means getting some damned sleep.
She’s 8 now
