November 15, 2004
this is about where I can't sleep
My whole life I have been a sleeper. That is, I MUST have 8 (or more) hours each night or things don't go well. However, I have been cursed with this issue wherein I HATE to go to sleep, and once asleep, I never want to wake up.
Aside from all that childish behavior I also get to contend with insomnia. Sometimes it is the I-can't-fall-asleep variety which seems like childplay compared to the occasional (yet more and more frequent the older I get) I-woke-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-now-can't-get-back-to-bed sort. I have all these tricks I learned or read about. I can count, I can make my head a blank slate and write out the things stressing me out (hi, yeah, I get it, I can't sleep when I am stressed out. However, I would like to go back to the age when just acknowledging the stress made me able to sleep.). I pretended there was a cleaner in my brain sweeping up random ideas and filing them into the right parts (oh yeah, did I mention the other time I can't sleep is when my mind gets in this crazy whirlwind and I can't slow it down?). My senior year of High School we learned how to do a partial self-hypnosis thing that used to lay me down in minutes. I have about a billion cures. I have my special "sleep bed" that when I go into it, it has a blanket that makes me fall asleep immediately (the spare bed, and this newest cure which was INFALLIBLE seems to be failing miserably now). The evidence is certain, these cures are strictly temporary.
When I was a kid I read that the average time it takes people to fall asleep is 7 minutes.
WHAT????? For me, 20 minutes is falling asleep quickly. But once asleep.....oh man........I won't go into the latest not-sleeping scenarios except to say that they seem very work-stress related. Until the last year or so there was never a time that I couldn't get back to sleep in about an hour with a little water, or peeing, or lotion, or a blanket, or throwing the blanket off.......that time seems to have gone away. Now if I wake at 4:30am I can't get back to sleep no matter how many times I try, or how many beds I check out.
Sometimes, though, I hover on the edge of sleep and not sleep and I snap to into full awake realizing that I must have just been fully asleep because the images in my head were not only not true, but also completely illogical that's when I think, "ahhhhhh, I was really asleep, I can roll over and crash out" rather than thinking, "oh SHIT! I can't sleep, DAMMIT!" That is a beautiful thing. This new oddness wherein I realize I wasn't awake for the last few minutes seems to have arrived with my new insomnia. Can't I have the fun asleep-while-I-think-I-am-awake without the never-going-back-to-sleep?
Maybe I need new pillows? (they seem awfully unsmooshy lately) Maybe I need to swap from summer duvet + under-blanket to full on Winter down comforter? Maybe I need.........?
Anyone out there with a fail safe cure? (again since comments are totally effed you can always e me at kerewin at mac dot com) I have tried reading (wakes me up), getting up and not treating bed as a place to be awake (hi, the whole HOUSE is apparently a place to be awake), hot baths (not practical at 4am but I might be willing in the future), tv? radio? those things keep me awake, I have to have NO NO NO noise while trying to sleep or my head gets all wound again, drugs? I never know ahead of time about the insomnia, and 4am is much too late to take anything if you have to get up and 8am. Also, I can't see myself as the kind of person who takes something every night. I am totally at a loss. I wish every night was a night wherein I woke up realizing that I wasn't actually awake, but dreaming, however that is just a (heh) pipe dream. HELP!
Posted by kerewin at November 15, 2004 11:01 PM