I can't sleep. Technically I suppose that's not true- I can sleep. I can close my eyes and doze off. I snore a little, drool a little, have a little dream- and then I wake up. (It's the waking up that clues in me in to the fact that I was actually asleep. I'm pretty clever you know.) So actually, what I can't do is stay asleep past about 3. Or go to sleep before 11. I can go to bed before 11, but rarely does sleep actually occur before 11.
Get your mind out of the gutter. I'm not doing anything interesting- I'm just lying there. I'm just Not Sleeping. In a really big way.
I'm coming up on day 5 of this and it's wearing thin. I'm not cute when I'm this tired. I'm not bitchy either- bitchy takes effort. I mean, bitchy done well takes effort because it requires wit. Wit requires west- I mean rest. Which I'm not getting. Because of the whole "not sleeping" thing.
Someone told me today that I'm not sleeping because I'm worried about something. Well of course I'm worried. If you're not worried, you're living in a cave. Things are sort of a disaster in general and my particular corner of it isn't any great shakes right now either.
See, my darling TMOTH is sick. Not ManFlu sick, really sick. Chronic, life-changing, bad medicine sick. Thankfully, though, not life-threatening sick. Certainly sleep-threatening sick. And Wit-Killing sick. So yeah- I worry. I worry about everything from the time I was mean to that guy in high school (sorry!) to what I'll do if TMOTH gets sicker and can't work. I worry about the house, which seems too small and too messy and too rundown to represent the pinnacle of my income potential. I worry about my kids and how they're coping with the New Normal.
Mostly, though, right now I worry about being able to sleep. "Not sleeping because you're worried about not being able to sleep" feels ironic. Is it ironic? I"m too tired to know. What I want is to be mad- to fight back against something. There's no Zombie Apocalypse to deal with, no contagion or Super Villian! to foil. In the movies, there'd be something powerful for me to do. Something meaningful and IMPORTANT. Something that would require a clipboard and a purposeful stride. And maybe a microphone. Or a megaphone. So that everyone could hear me make big important updates about the situation. Don't panic. Our best researchers are on the job. A solution is coming!
But I fear that the people who would listen are also tired of hearing about it. I worry that there is no solution, no research, no important updates. I'm starting to suspect that this just...is. And that is unacceptable.
There's no way to be Badass in this, nothing Badass about managing a chronic autoimmune disease.
Maybe the Badass is in getting out of bed in the morning, but I wouldn't know. I'm too tired to tell.
The Badass is DEFINTELY in the getting up every morning. Going on day to day, hour to hour, sometimes second to second. The Badass is hanging on until you come to grips with the devastation. You give up and get hope and ride the roller coaster, and hopefully it gets a little easier. A little good day, a little breakthrough, another inch higher in the happy meter for the moment. The Badass is in griping and moaning to those who understand, being there for those who need it, and learning new coping skills. Keep in mind that the progress can seem microscopic and seem to take forever. But I can guarantee you that you will make progress. You just won't recognize it at first, because it's not the way you pictured it. You can't picture the progress at this point because you've never been here before. It wold help if there was a spleenless support group out there! Maybe you could form one to keep you busy. <3
ReplyDeleteHonestly, someone on MT told me to take two benadryl, 2 hours before bedtime for 2 weeks to get over my little lack of sleep spiral and it worked. I encourage you to do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, since you are a writer after all, maybe keep a journal next to your bed (not your real journal of course) and title it something charming like, "ALL THE TROUBLES IN THE UNIVERSE ARE COMING DOWN ON MY HEAD" or you could call it Betty, you know, whatever and you write down (without self editing), every insane worried thought you have and promise yourself that you will deal with that (or not) tomorrow.
Getting out of bed and putting one foot in front of the other is the most bad-ass thing sometime. Heroes journey, right? These are the trials. You have the trials before the triumph every time.