10:13 p.m. | 2005-01-25
Every Line Is About...You Know
I've never had trouble sleeping. And truly I never was one of those kids who could just sleep for days. I rarely slept in past 10 until I started college. I was always the last to go to bed at slumber parties and the first to wake. I didn't mind getting up early and only on occassion found myself yearning for my bed because once something had woken me up--I was up.
The past 5 days, though, have yielded me about 6 hours of sleep total. I've been groggy and "not with it" and needed more caffiene than usual to get through my day. And even though I come home and my feet ache like I've never felt before and I can barely stand...when I get to bed I just lay there, eyes closed or open, with little want or ability to actually drift off.
Don't get me wrong, I want to sleep. My body is saying that I'll need it because I've seen my schedule for the next three days. Tomorrow I get up at 4 am, go to work, get off at 12:45 and then go to my second job at 1 until 8pm. My Thursday is much like that except I have to be to work at 6, not 5, and I get off at 2:30, only to go to work at 3. Friday morning I have to me at work again at 5. And I know how much these days take a toll on my body. I used to have three of them a week, but I'd have a day to recover, to only have one shift, and to not need to be running at full steam always.
When I would go to bed as a child I remember two distinct methods I employed. The first was to exhaust myself so entirely that I HAD to collapse into bed (this was most of high school). But I remember I used to lay in bed as a very young girl and just let my mind wander. Thinking too much at once and eventually getting too imaginative with it thus driving me to a dream. I always was able to control my dreams to an extent, especially if I woke up. I can even re-enter dreams I was just having.
But these past days have been killing me.
Because I feel like crying but everytime I get close to it or I cry I feel vapid and silly and like I have no reason to cry. I'm not unsatisfied, I'm not really that overworked, and the thing that has been causing me pain in my life is now gone. I miss needing no reason to cry. But now I just sit there with my soft sheets and I can't do a thing about it. I've tried night caps and hot cocoa and late night tv and even my old fail safe: LoveLine. All these things keep me up.
I've never had insomnia before and I'm not sure what it feels like but if it's anything like what Fight Club says it is ("With insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy") than I'm never really asleep nor awake because I live my dreams and I sleep my days and it's all getting so tiring.
It got so bad my boss asked me the other day if I was ok. I hadn't noticed I hadn't been sleeping much, just that I'd been hurting more and I honestly couldn't tell her what was wrong with me.
I wonder what its causes are. I wonder what brings it about. I wonder why I don't crash in the afternoons to take naps. I wonder why I feel guilty getting off work at 11 and taking a nap--so I don't, I do laundry and clean.
I just want to know what's wrong and why I hurt for no reason.
