Insomnia: Part III

Okay, so....
last night I slept pretty good, considering everything. Pretty good for me at least.

Yet I was still tired today. So tired I could barely think. I contemplated wishing I had the kind of job I could call in sick while the Nanny watched the kids and I slept twelve hours.

This morning, I could not even practically move enough to pour some cereal for the poor children attempting to put on a Ballet for me before I dragged myself into the shower.

I expected tonight as soon as they went out, so would I. But I had a few chores to finish up and I'm about to fold my last load of laundry and would you look at the time?

Ugh. I'm going to get through this in one piece.

I always do.

Insomnia: Part II

(Hint: Reading Insomnia first would make more sense of this entry...)

Or maybe it is because we know what the reality of the morning and tomorrow brings. And that is what gets in the way of our sleep.

A human can only survive so long without sleep; sleep is necessary like food and water.

So eventually I know, my mind and body and soul will break and sleep will wash over me like the blue waves of Bora Bora.

Eyes so tired they can not read a book, see a computer or watch TV can suddenly pop open when they hit a bed knowing tomorrow brings new challenges to face and old ones to surrender and deal with.

XOXO

Insomnia

Deep breath.

Anxiety sends shivers down my spine. Nights and nights of sleep deprivation, worry, and pain have left me in a thick fog.

Pain not only keeps me from sleeping and awakens me during the night, but distracts me throughout my day. Thoughts of things undone burden me at times when I am unable to tend to them. Taxes due, unfinished inventory, appointments to make and attend, phone calls not returned, things to post, a dishwasher to unload, laundry piling up, etc. We all have a clear picture of our unfinished tasks.

My personal life is in shambles and my finances are sickening.

I worry about the children.

Not only do I feel emotionally destroyed, but my appetite is at its best a minimum and what does go in rarely wants to stay. Migraines come and go as they please. Muscle spasms- probably due to unusual movements of doing too much in different ways to avoid the pain after surgery- seem to not be healing.

I have no health insurance.
My children have no health insurance.

I try and keep the most positive, upbeat attitude and demeanor possible. But inside I feel the monster ripping up my insides and at night I lie there writhing in pain no amount of medicine seems to cure. Subside a little perhaps, but no better than that.

My coffee pot is broken.
And that is the least of the worries.

Balled up disgust comes out as the random leg cramp. When I do sleep, I suffer from disturbing dreams and nightmares I am aware I am having, but cannot awaken from.

I long for a lengthy, uninterrupted, healthy, healing and refreshing sleep.

Almost midnight and I am not even there yet. My day starts in just under seven hours. I never needed much sleep, but night after night of rarely any at all (and certainly no actual good sleep), I have no idea how many hours it would take to get me to the place where I need to be.

The problems never go away. If not these, than that. So really I should not focus on those "things" as being reasons.

My eyes are tired and this computer screen seems far away. A lot of things seem very, very far away right now and others seem too close for my liking.

I know I will get into my bed and at least lie there in an attempt to rest my soul even if my mind does not cooperate.

Insomnia has made me beyond mad before. Back in the day before I even new there were things to take to help. And then, even after.
Night after night would blend into some sort of dream. Sometimes it would be days or even weeks before a real sleep would come. Even when they started me on meds and sleeping pills this did not change. The hallucinations become so vivid after enough time. Sometimes you feel as if you are sleeping with your eyes open in odd places. Time passes unusually. Things happen that you are unsure are really happening and will never really know if they did.

Sometimes our stress leads us to oversleeping and an unwillingness to wake up and move on. I am not in that place. If I just go through the motions everyday, maybe something right will happen. Tempers are short when we are tired. We don't look well. Eventually others notice. They comment as if we do not know. As if there is something we can do about it.

Advice is given unwanted and freely like when you are pregnant in a public place and some stranger comments about what you should be eating regularly or how to wear the right shoes to support the baby. As if someone with any common sense does not know these things. Whether or not we do everything perfectly and correctly, for the most part we already know. And when we don't, probably we are reading about it, asking, looking it up.

Sleep.

I long for you.

I feel your blanket covering my cold, small body like nothing else can. I shiver thinking about it.

We want each other in a comforting way.

The mind spins so fast we cannot even concentrate long enough to sleep sometimes, some weeks.

Like a bowl of hot soup, I know it will feel good and I should feel better after.

Such chaos surrounds me and my game face is plastered on. I do not know what I feel.

Exhausted. Three syllables that don't do true justice when we truly feel it. Exhausted is not just a night of up late talking or too much wine the night before or even a hard day of work or dealing with our children. It is a true physical sensation that only coincides with a lifetime of sleep deprivation. Fatigue after weeks of lacking proper sleep hurts our brain, compromising our decision making and ability to do our best. That is exhaustion.

So many word are overused- or should I say misused? As they are some kind of verb or adjective to describe something simple when actually their meanings are much more complex.

TBC

Where did she go?

Where has she been they ask?

Or perhaps they have not noticed that I have not been to this place in about six weeks.

It is interesting how the time flies by as we age.

If you read them all, you would have noticed that I have been around some. A little Live Journaling and a little Fresh Picking but not really a lot of writing about me and life. Have I been avoiding because I am afraid my flowing thoughts might put words on this page I might not want to see? Or did I just not want to talk about it? And what really is "so busy, you know, and all"?

And still I am not saying anything at all yet.

If we made a chart of our life that included everyday we would every live and could put a bright dot on what we believe would make it to the top one hundred weeks in our existence and a dark dot on what we believe would be the toughest/hardest/saddest, this week would have a dark dot.

And I don't say that a lot because I am one of those people who truly believe that we are thrown obstacles to overcome regularly and that is what makes us who we are and who we become. But weeks of recovery and hardship finally led to a spiral of difficulty that was not just an obstacle, but in fact another discovery (light bulb on) that we were not looking for at all. Discoveries and realizations during these obstacles along with a feeling of helplessness that no matter what we can do in the face of this hardship we CANNOT fix or change it and have to sit somewhat on the sideline while we do what we can as we watch something painfully crumble.

So after one too many sleepless nights and anxiety, I finally reside on the couch to lose myself in a movie and go to bed. Vow to do nothing but, once the kids were all down. And so what did I pick? Bridge to Terabithia.
This reminds me of weeks such as these as a child when I would finally want some ending to the tough week when I would pick up the book and read it one more time. Because we cannot always make sense of things and the reasons for tragedies and hardships are never clear in the midst of them. And I know when it nears the end and the tears tremble uncontrollably down my face, I can just say they are for this wonderfully tragic story.

I just don't exactly say which story they are chasing.