That’s how I feel right now. Like I am in World War 2 era London, hunkered down in a bunker trying and failing to ignore the thuds and bangs and other horrible noises from above so I can finally get some sleep.
Except that I fucking hate sleep.
I thought I had done the smart and adult thing last night/this morning when I took my sleeping pillls at 5 am. My therapy appointment wasn’t until 1 p,m (or so I thought), and I don’t usually sleep more than five or six hours a night, so I figured I would have plenty of time to sleep, wake up, and be all woken up and ready by therapy time.
Bzzzzzzzt! Wrong. I was dead sleeepy all through therapy, despite having had around seven hours of sleep. I am only starting to wake up now and it is 3:18 pm.
And when I say I was sleepy in therapy, I mean I was barely coherent. I kept fading in and out of the conversation as my brain kept trying to make me sleep .I frelt like I was barely there. It was very stressful to fight the sleepiness.
But I bet my therapist has no idea I was in such distress. I hide mjy pain. It’s what you do when you were the baby that stopped crying.
This is no good,. I am still falling asleep. I will be back later.
Much later, as it turns out.
Well, I feel like I am on the opposite shore of that ocean of sleepiness now. I still feel pretty waterlogged but at least I am drying out in the sun.
Part of the problem is that now that it is getting serious about being fall, I’ve had to shut my windows and turn on the heat in my room.
And hisorically speaking, two things have always made me sleepy : poor ventilation, and radiant wamrth.
I’n getting both of those right now.
I first noticed the ventilation thing when I was a college stuident (the first time) and I had some classes in this classroom that was somewhat well known for making people sleepy because it was a basement classroom with no windows and hence subpar ventilation.
This turned courses I loved, like Psych 101 and The History of the English Language, into constant battles for consciousness. And both of those courses had significant video components, and thus required the lights to be turned down.
That made staying awake even harder. And we all had that problem. I just had it a little worse because I’m the sort of person who likes to sit directly in front of the professor so he can hear and see everything clearly.
And, to be honest. to reduce my social anxiety by letting me ignore most of my classmates. I don’t see them, they are all behind me,, I can be calm.
That’s quite sad, really.
Adn the radiant warmth thing I have experienced my whole life. I call it “the melt” because I associate it with coming home on a cold winter day and the heat of the house making me deliciously drowsy and needing a nap in which I would sleep quite well.
The only problem with that is when it happens when a nap is not an option. Like, for instance, when I had the seat right next to the radiator in Physics class in grade 11.
And guess what, it was the first class of the day.
So I would come in from a busy morning of walking to school and resenting having to walk to school on some bitterly cold day, sits in my assigned seat, and spend the next hour or so playing chicken with totally falling asleep in class.
To be honest, I was that at least one time I had just gone for it. Fallens asleep right in class. Just to see what would happen.
But my fear of falling behind the other students – which is quite potent – would never have let me do that.
The very thought that they are all learning something without me gives a panicky feeling like I am being left behind for good.
This is what happens when you are the youngest of four kids and people have a tendency to forget you.
Today’s been rough. Dealing with all that sleepiness was hard. Fighting to stay awake and stay focused is so goddamned stressful.
It would have been fine if this had happened on one of my lazy days where I have nothing in particular on in terms of socializing.
Saturday would be perfect because I don’t even have an episode to write. Or Friday, come to think of it,. for the same reason.
But no, it had to happen on a Thursday, the day of the week where I have therapy AND the Paragon meeting. It’s my busiest day of the week.
so I spent most of today either asleep or awake and trying not to falls asleep. In fact, I wasn’t sure I would even make tonight’s Paragon get together. Despite having slept most of the day, I was still so sleepy I was drifting of involuntarily as late as 6 pm.
I took one more 45 minute nap, and that seemed to do the trick. I was finally awake enough to go do stuff. I still felt like I needed to nap for a few months, but at least I was upright and conscious and more or less sentient.
All in all, I consider today to be a writeoff. Some days are like that. All you can do is write them off as one of those days and go on with your life.
When I finish this blog entry, I am going to take my clothes off, curls up in bed, turn out the light, and close my eyes for a while.Try to let the stresses and confusuion and and weariness of the day wash away in the outgoing tide and leave me fresh and new.
And when I open my eyes again,m it will be a new day.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.