Reel Expression

Dig it kats n kittens, insomnia has gotton the better of me for over 3 months now. I’ve always had and semi delt with insomnia for as long as I can remember, but it’s never been this bad or lasted this long.

There are many varring degress of insomnia. Some kinds are you can’t stay asleep long enough or wake up constantly all night but my kind is the heady can’t bloody fall asleep type. The sort where I’m falling asleep all day at my desk trying to do anything, but the second my head hits that pillow I’m wide awake and thinking about anything and everything. It’s called “sleep onset insomnia.”

Usually this happens every few nights and only for a couple of hours at most. Since early January it has been a constant. 5-16 hours just lying there wishing I could fall asleep. No matter what time it is or how long I’ve been awake. It’s becoming more and more frustrating after every passing day. Just laying there, not able to do much of anything because I’m so bloody tired but still unable to actually fall alseep.

A constant time shift in your body schedule seems to completly fuck up your system. Think about it, one day you wake up at 3pm, then next at 12am, then perhaps 2:30am and then 5:30am. You wake up confused at what day it is or what part of the day has already passed. Confused at how to fix it. Frustrated. That’s been my weekend in exact times. Not to mention pretty much what the entire year has been thus far.

First the sleep schedule gets all out of wack, then comes the eating schedule and the body gets even more confused. Oh how many times I’ve had dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner? How many times have I’ve just skipped dinner all together? How many times even have I had beer for breakfast due to waking up just before going out with mates? Easter I woke up at 5pm to find out I had to cook dinner for 7 people, 1/2 of which are vegatarians and the house competly stocked with wine for the feast.

3 + months of not eating well really only seems to work up til your mid 20’s I’ve found. At 30, your body seems to respond in very odd and uncomfortable ways. Including stomach flu, standard flu, and annoying allergy attacks.

My perfect sleep schedule is off by “normal” standards. But I don’t have a normal job, and I like working “off” hours. It’s probably why I’m much better suited at not having a normal job. I’m a night owl. I work best (creatively) at night. The tehcnical name for it is called “delayed sleep phase syndrome.” Its a pretty difficult thing to cure as its a syndrome with your body clock where your best sleeping times is after the “normal” times. Most people who do “fix” sleeping times revert back to their own body clock timing within a week. I have found that my best sleeping schedule is from 4am - noon after a long battle of trying to change that with sleep studies in my earlier years. I just wish right now that my body would finally fix itself, as the insomnia is something completly different.

Ok, wishing is all well and good but making my body do my bidding is another story. It’s not like I didn’t try and force myself to get on a schedule. Hell, I’ve actually gotton it to work twice now but it doesn’t seem to last. Everything that has ever worked in the past just doesn’t. Yesterday was my 10th all nighter since the new year. And I’m not talking fun clubbing all nighters, but the boring sit around and watch tv and movies kind. In the past, I’ve tried every type of sleeping pill out there and nothing seems to work except benadryl. But only the US kind as the UK version is non-sleepy. Has that worked at all? Nope. I’ve tried drinking. Heavy drinking seems to make me pass out but only for a few hours and waking up is not fun. Light drinking didn’t do much of anything at all, where usually a beer or 2 or a glass of wine or 2 used to work. Relaxing baths? Nothing. Watching a couple episodes of tv? Nothing.

I went to the doctor last week for stronger allergy pills and to discuss my increasingly frustrating insomnia. Last year you may remember my battle with allergies around this time with my eyes, and I’ve been starting to feel the starting of the same symptoms. I’ve never enjoyed talking to doctors about the insomnia thing. Usually they just prescribe pills which never work or put it off on sadness/stress/anxiety even if that’s never actually the case. Yes I have anxiety over the insomnia now which isn’t helping anything but it actually had to start getting bad before it could stress me out. Duh. I personally have serious issues with the common conceptions of insnomnia. When I’m sad, I have no problems sleeping. I sleep a lot when that happens. For stress/anxiety watching tv, taking baths, imagining “happy & soothing thoughts” (self hypnosis), acupressure, ect usually works.

In the end, he just gave me some pills that don’t help with falling asleep but make me sleep more and I’m even more tired when I’m awake. Fun fun. I’m still working on it and hopefully this will all be fixed so I can get all the many creative things I’ve got zooming around in my head out.

Cheers
Luth