Been thinking a lot about my issues with bad sleep lately.
It started when something I was watching (don’t recall what) mentioned Irregular Sleep-Wake Syndrome and how bad it was for your health.
They described the symptoms and it sounded exactly like me. Rarely sleep for very long, sleep broken up into many sessions, both insomnia and day drowsiness.
I knew that my shitty sleep habits were a problem. I knew they were probably unhealthy. I know I should get my shit together and try to sleep like a normal human.
I just didn’t know there was a name and an assigned pathology for it.
With a high comorbidity associated with it.
So that’s a gentle hint from fate that I should stop fucking around and get this shit under control some time real soon.
And it’s not like I don’t know how : stop all the fucking napping. If I just stayed awake and out of my bed all day like a normal person,
At least that’s the theory.
But I’m grown extremely emotionally dependent on naps. Like I have said many times before, I use them to reset my background anxiety level so that it never gets too high.
That’s not all, though. It’s also where I hide from the world. When even this absurdly low impact life of mine is too much for me, I can always retreat even further into sleep.
Like I keep saying, sleep is death without the commitment.
I mean, sure, death ends your pain, but what if you change your mind and decide you don’t like it later?
I could take a sleeping pill. I have many. But we all know what that means : hyper REM-dense sleep that damn near kills me,
Or feels like it does, anyhow.
And the thing is, sleeping pills and sleep apnea don’t always get along. The pills can make the apnea worse by making it harder for the body to respond to the lack of oxygen, as well as further relaxing the very areas of the trachea and palate that get in the way of my breathing when I sleep in the first place.
So if pills are out and skipping the naps would be too difficult, what does that leave?
CPAP of course.
I really need to give it another shot. Which means this time, I have to be patient enough to figure out how to put the damned thing on.
I got VERY confused by all the straps and things last time.
And if I still can’t figure it out, I won’t just give up in frustration. I will call my service rep, or look up a YouTube video, or SOMEthing.
I’ve got to do something to get my life moving in the right direction. The heart operation was only the beginning.
Might be nice to feel good for a change.
More after the break.
Get out of here!
A comment I left on this youtube video :
Oh yeah. See, back in the 80’s, I was a kid with no friends and a mall within walking distance. So when I was bored I would go to the mall and just kind of hang around. Some of the store owners really didn’t like me and would chase me out if they saw me. What amazes me now is how little that bothered me. I was a very shy kid and yet routine getting kicked out of the book store or Radio Shock or the greeting card store didn’t phase me. Pretty sure I matched the clinical definition of “pesky”. I guess I knew that sure, they would kick me out. But then they would go back to running their business and forget about me and I would slip in again. I suppose to me it was kind of a game. I was a pest. 🙂
Sleep, part 2
Whaaat? The same topic in both halves? What’s next, competence?
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
The thing is, I have never been good at sleep.
Even as a tiny child, I recall laying on my back on my crib, staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, unable to get to sleep.
Luckily, I was so small that I had no idea there was anything wrong with that and it’s not like I had a schedule to keep yet anyway, so it didn’t upset me.
But all throughout my life, it’s taken me a long time to get to sleep. And in junior high I started having problems with insomnia.
Took me a long time to figure out how to circumvent that.
Protip : turn the alarm clock to face the wall!
And honestly, I would probably have insomnia issues now if I had anything like a 9 to 5 or even a student’s schedule.
Then again, my anti-insomnia (pro-somnia?) game is quite good now.
Protip : never ever try to sleep. Trying makes you focus. Focus is the opposite of sleep. Remember always that sleep is not something you make happen. It’s something you let happen. The idea is to remove all the obstacles you can.
Come to think of it, I feel the same way about romance.
Another thing my brain cooked up for me to worry about : it has been a very long time since I remembered a dream.
I’ve remembered random fragments. Some random thing will trigger some incredibly tiny fragment of a dream – a sense of recognition, or the ghost of an odor, or a vague feeling of warmth like you’re coming in your front door on a cold Fall day.
But that is it. And I can’t help wonder if my poor shattered and scattered sleep is to blame. They say it takes three hours to get to the truly deep REM sleep that really nourishes and revitalizes your brain. Finishes the job of transferring medium term memories into long term storage.
I haven’t gotten three solid hours of continuous sleep in years.
I have a lot of trouble remembering stuff, too.
Probably just a coincidence.
Still, it would be interesting to find out what life with a clear head is like.
To be honest, it kind of scares me.
This fog that chokes me also hides me.
After all these years of being a Trog, I dunno if I can stand direct sunlight again.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.
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