Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: sleep issues

Sleep, eat, overthink (part seven)

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My car would not start tonight. A month or two ago, it wouldn’t start and I charged it overnight with my battery charger (after talking to my brother about it). He said that I should start it every few months or drive it twenty minutes every few months to keep the battery juiced. I tried it a few days ago just to make sure it started. I was meeting a friend for dinner tonight–and the car would  not start. All the lights were lit up like it does when the battery is dead. My friend came to pick me up (the restaurant was only two or three minutes from my house), and when I got back home, I called put my car on the charger.

Then, I called my brother to tell him what happened. He immediately said that I needed a new battery; I was morbidly glad that I had properly diagonosed the siuation. But, then a weight settled on my shoulders because I hate doing car shit. Especially since I have a hybrid, so it’s a bit trickier than if I just had a gas car. Also, tomorrow/today is Friday. And I am single, which means I have to just do it myself. Or call my brother to help me. I don’t like to rely on him too much, though, because he’s very busy.

Oh, and the reason I was checking to see if my car worked was because I want to get one of my meds before the weekend. Sigh.

My sleep has been terrible the last two nights. I went to bed earlier for me, and I got three hours and four-and-a-half hours, respectively. Maybe closer to five the second night, but that’s still not enough. It’s so frustrating to actually try to do the right(ish) thing and still not get enough sleep. I’ve been snoozing on and off while I’m “awake”, which is very frustrating.

I need to get more than six hours of sleep tonight, but with the car woes on my mind, who knows?

I don’t think I’ll finish this tonight. I’m so tired, and I keep nodding off. I’ll write more tomorrow.

(Written the next day.) I managed to get over seven hours of sleep last night, so I feel a bit better. My car place wasn’t open past ten a.m., so I did not get to talk to them. But I was able to start my car and went to pick up my meds.

Still. I’m feeling pretty down for a variety of reasons. Some big, some small, but it’s just all adding up to me being pretty unhappy at the moment. And still exhausted from getting shitty sleep the last couple of days. I’ve been nodding on and off, and never feeling awake, really.


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Sleep is such a jerk, part six

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In the Discord I’m in, we were talking about breakfast sandwiches, specifically sausage egg cheese on a biscuit. That was my fave when I was able to eat wheat and dairy–or more to the point, when I ate it. McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches, to be precise. So fucknig good. I would eat one in a heartbeat if I could. It didn’t seem like it would be that hard to make a simplified version so I bought eggs and bagels. I already had fake cheese. I was optimistic that I could scramble a few eggs. I’ve done it before. It’s really one of the easiest things to cook. For me, anyway. Oh, and I bought some cooked sausage patties as well.

I tried tonight. I cracked towo eggs into the skillet (oil first!) and…forgot that I should have whisked the eggs first. I put in a few slices of fake cheese and basically broke up the egg with the spatula. So it was more like chopped sunny side up egg. Which, fine, I guess (I’m pretty sure I cooked it thoroughly), but I was disappointed in the result. I put a thin layer of cream cheese on the bagel halves, then the heated up sausage patties, then the egg/cheese mess. It was…fine. I had one half bagel and that was enough. ‘Coz I was full, I mean, not that it tasted awful. It was, as I said, fine.

Would I try it again? Maybe. It wasn’t really worth the effort, but I do actually know to whisk eggs before scrambling them. I just forgot because I hadn’t done it in quite some time. Made eggs, I mean. It really wasn’t worth it, though. If I’m going to be honest.

Yesterday, I went on a rant about why I don’t like to cook and that I found it might be a neurospicy thing. When I read into it, it makes sense. People who like to cook and who are good at it like to say how easy it is. As I said, when I complained to my brother after I bought an intapot because the only thing it saves is cooking time (I still had to do all the prep–which is the part I hate), he said dismissively, “Well, yes. Of course you still have to do that” as if I were stupid for thinking otherwise.

Which in retrospect, yeah, it was silly of me to think that, but as someone who doesn’t cook, how the fuck was I to know? This thing had been touted as a game changer, a miracle, and from the descriptions I read, it implied that it involved no effort whatsoever. Pardon me if I did not have the experience to know the difference between it’s a miracle* and it’ll save a bit of time.

Again, as I mentioned in my last post, it’s hard for people who are good at something to realize what they consider basic may not be so basic to other people.


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Thinking about how I think, part five

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I’m still thinking about my thinking and what parts of it I want to/think I’m able to change. In yesterday’s post, I talked about my unending difficulty in getting to bed at a reasonable time. It’s something I’ve struggled with all my life, and any time I think I might have a handle on it, I don’t. It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life, quite frankly (trying to get a decent sleep schedule), and I don’t know if I can actually do it.

Huh. This is the first time I’ve actually admitted that.  Let me clarify. By “it”, I mean getting to  bed at 2 a.m. every night. I think even 3 a.m. is pushing it. I have said for many years that it’s possible while I continue to not do it. Most emphatically not to do it. Right now, I’m getting to bed around seven to eight, which is the latest I’ve ever done.

As for eating, I’m also in a pretty bad rut. I’ve been DoorDashing way too much as it’s way too convenient. I hate cooking. I see it as a huge waste of time, especially as I live alone. I don’t mind eating the same thing several days in a row, so I get the idea of cooking in batches. But it’s still so much work for such little return. I hate all the prep work so much. But, I can do simple things when I put my mind to it. Like pasta and sauce, scrambled eggs, and salads. The last isn’t cooking, obviously, but it’s still more effort than I actually want to make.

Here’s the thing. It’s really hard to separate to stop thinking of myself as lazy because it’s what I’ve been told all my life. Seriously. How the fuck hard is it to put a simple salad together? I can even buy the bagged lettuce for fuck’s sake. It is literally buy the bag of lettuce/spinach/whatever and a bottle of  dressing. Yes, I can add tomatoes to make it even better. If I’m very ambitious, I’ll buy an avocado and let it rot. This is the problem. I have all the good intentions in the world, but that means jackshit at the end of the day if I don’t actually eat them.

I have a dozen eggs sitting in the fridge right now. I bought them several days ago with the intent to make breakfast sandwiches. People in the Discord were going on and on about them, and it inspired me. I like eggs, and I can actually make a good omelet/scrambled eggs. I put in fake cheese, some kind of veggie, and sometimes chicken or ham. It truly is simple and doesn’t make time at all. Oh, sometimes I put lactose-free sour cream in it as well.

I have yet to make anything with the eggs. They are sitting guiltily in my fridge, and I am aware that time is running out. Will I make anything with them before I have to toss them? Who knows? If I don’t, then I’ll feel so bad when I throw them out. And yet.


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Poking more into my brain, part four

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Arrrgh. How am I here yet again?! I have a friend, A, who gently pokes me to go to bed early. It’s a positive thing on her part, and I call her my reverse-alarm. She poked me around 4 p.m., and I said I was aiming to go to bed by 4 a.m. I mean, that seemed reasonable twelve hours ago. Twelve hours was so much time! And yet, here I am ten minutes before said time, and I am nowhere near ready to go to bed. Four in the morning was a reasonable time for me to set as a goal for going to bed. Unfortunately, I fucked around too much and I found out that I am once again not quite ready to go to bed.

I know being frustrated with myself won’t help. Indeed, it just makes things worse because of the shame spiral, but I can’t necessarily stop myself, either. I get others being frustrated with someone who can’t do something on time, but there’s no way they’re more frustrated with that person than that person is with themselves.

I hate that I let hours slip by while I do nothing worthwhile. It’s not like I’m curing cancer or anything important like that. I’m usually fucking around on the internet or playing games or watching videos. None of that is enrichment for the brain, and I could easily chop off three-fourths of it all.

I know that it’s the way my brain works (or doesn’t), but it’s so fucking frustrating. I want my brain to be normal for once. It’s not something I would usually say, but let me experience it for one day, please. Actually, no, don’t. If I only got to feel it for one day, then it was whisked away from me, I would be displeased, no matter what.

If I preferred how I felt when I was normal, then I would be forever sad that I had to give that up. Unless they erased my memory of it once I returned to my normal. Then, fine. whatever. But why would I bother doing it if I could not remember it? What’s the point in that? If I preferred how I was as a weirdo rather than being normal, then I would be doubly mad at all the people judging me after I lived as aa normie for the day.

Having said all that, I would probably do it if it was on offer because I am incorrigibly curious. It’s one of the best and worst things about me, as with many of my traits. I don’t half-ass anything. If I’m going to do it, I’m using my full ass. It’s not much, but it’s more than it has ever been–thanks to Taiji.

Back to eating. Here’s my post from yesterday in which I talk about how I eat (and don’t)–which is not “normal”. I have said in the past that I know most of my flaws. I know the ones that are worth trying to fix and the ones that aren’t. for exmple, I am a huge procrastinator. I work to the back end of a deadline, and I’ve made my peace with that.


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The (sleep) struggle continues to be real

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My struggles with sleep continue. It’s not just sleep; it’s me having trouble going to bed at a decent time. Right now, it’s five in the mornning. I should be in bed, but I’m not. I got four hours of sleep last night–which was better than I expected because I thought I’d go to bed at seven as I have been doing, and I had to get up at nine-thirty. Well, not had, but it was ideal. So you would think that I’d had tumbled into bed two or three hours ago, but nope. I did nap on and off for about two hours around one in the morning, but that was very fitful. Or rather, it was sleep for fifteen minutes; be awake for ten minutes, etc. I probably got about an hour’s worth of sleep overall, but chopped up.

I got one night of nine hours, which felt luxurious. I was hoping it would be a springboard to better sleep, but no. It was not. In fact, I got worse sleep after that. And, last night, around three in the morning, I realized it was Tuesday night and not Monday night. That’s why I had to wake up at nine-thirty. I have a standing appointment every Wednesday that should be in the early afternoon, but it can actually happen any time from early morning to late afternoon. Which means getting up way earlier than I normally do.

I keep thinking that I’ll change my habits without actually doing anything to change them. I know that’s part of my neurodivergence, but I don’t want to start using that as an excuse not to work on my issues. It’s interesting. In the Discord I’m in, there has been discussion about how more people are claiming to be autistic than before. The general tone to the discussion wast that too many people were claiming to be autistic because it’s trendy.

And, I just sighed internally. This is the same thing people always say about ‘trends’–meaning more awareness of an issue. Back when people were more aware of gluten as a thing, suddenly, so many people were supposedly going gluten-free (without really knowing what it meant). Then other people started griping on people jumping on the gluten-free train, especially servers (complaining about it). And people who were gluten-free for legit reasons were griping about it because it made them look bad/made servers not take them seriously.

The former, well, that’s just not somethin I give a shit about. It’s always been something a minority is cognizant of, but I simply don’t care. It’s not my responsibility to be the representative of all _____ (fill in the blank with anything). There have always been people in the minority who strive to be perfect so the majority can’t take any issue with them. First-gen Asians, especially, had that mind set. BLending in and getting along. That’s why we were the invisible minority for so long.

Ahem. My friend, A, suggests that I give myself a curfew for getting off the computer. She is right, and it’s a good suggestion, but my god. I am so resistant to doing that. I don’t even quite know why. I have always had a hard time going to bed, but I am unsure as to why the strong resistance to setting a curfew.

let’s see if I can tease it out.


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Thinking about thinking (and my brain), part four

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Let’s talk more about my brain and how I think. In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how the stereotypical depiction of autism prevented me from recognizing that I might be autistic until just a few years ago.

One thing I  mentioned was how I know not to natter on and on about my obsessions because it annoys other people. I also don’t mention them for another reason–because they are precious to me and talking about them with people who don’t feel the same way can make me feel some kind of way.

One trait of autism is being easily swayed/manipulated. This was another reason I thought I could not be autistic. When it comes to important issues–I am an unmovable force. Take abortion, for example. Once I realized what it was and how important it was for the autonomy of women, I have not wavered in my support of it. And, by “it” I specifiaclly mean abortion. Yes, I am pro-choice, but in this case, I want to emphasize that I specifically support abortion.

Side note: It irks me how pro-choice has been crafted to mean, “Yes, it’s so terrible that some people have to get abortions, but we support them in their difficult moments”. It can be terrible/hard/traumatic, but there are plenty of people who felt it was an easy decision and felt relief/joy when they had it done. That never gets talked about. No, it has to be all about suffering and tragedy–as does most things that traditionally pertain to women.

Side note to the side note: When I decided I did not want to have children and realized I didn’t have to, I felt such a sense of relief and joy. I could not explain it, but I felt as if a million-pound weight fell from my shoulders. I knew deep in my heart that this was the best decision I hahd ever made in my life, and thirty-five years later, I feel it even more strongly.

That’s another thing that at that time, women were apologizing for–not having children, I mean. I looked for anyone who felt the same way (remember, this was before the internet was the behemouth that it is now). I found one anthology from women, writers and not, who decided not to have children. I was so eager to read it, but to my disappointment, every single one of them apologized, excused, or made themselves smaller as they talked about their decision not to have children.

If I were to write for an anthology about my decision not to have children, I would be celebratory and jubilant. I’m not being hyperbolic; if anything, I’m understating my emotions.

The other thing I read that stuck in my brain was an article about mothers. Not because of the article itself, but because of the commenter who was brave enough to say that she regretted having children and why. Other commenters chimed in with similar sentiments, and it was the first time I saw an honest conversation from women who wished they hadn’t had children.


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More about my brain and how I think, part three

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Let’s talk more about my brain, how I think, and the difficulty  I’m having with sleep. In my last post, I talked quite a bit about how I never really thought I could have autism because the stereotype of it did not feel like it fit me–at all.

I didn’t want to go on a thousand-word rant about the patriarchy because I’ve done it many times before, and it wasn’t the point of the post. But let’s all acknowledge that we know that the patriarchy has a long reach.

It’s not often than I say plainly that the patriarchy is the reason I reacted in a certain way (or didn’t), but it’s completely true in this case. I had no idea I could have autism because the image of it in my head up until maybe four years ago was of a boy (probably white, but not necessarily) between five and fifteen.  Someone who fidgeted and stimmed constantly, and, of course, someone who was awkward in social interactions and could not make (or sustain) eye contact.

None of that fits me. Except maybe the last. I don’t make eye contact, but I can do the ‘look at their nose’ thing.

When my autistic friend told me to take an online autism test unmasked as much as possible, that was eye-opening. The test itself talked about masking and how so many autistic people did it automatically. They wanted you to take the test as unmasked as possible, and they even padded the scores to include masking.

Knowing all that, I still struggled taking the test without automatically masking. I have been doing it most of my life–for fifty-years plus. I don’t know how to be unmasked any longer. It had a Likert scale and would make statements like, “I feel comfortabel with my social skills in a crowd”. Then, of course, you had to pick a number. 1 was like highly agree, 2 agree, 3 neutral, 4 disagree, 5 highly disagree or something like that.

The instructions explicitly said to put down the number that described you before you put on your mask–and I had no idea. As I said, my mask was installed in me at such a young age and so firmly, I just could not imagine myself without it. I tried. I knocked a point off here and there, but I honestly had no idea what to score myself. That’s how ingrained the mask is on my face. Er, on me.

I scored in the low range (meaning the very bottom of I could possibly be autistic). The thing that was important, though, was that it opened my eyes to the idea that I might be autistic. It might be harder for me to find my way to what the actual truth is (and I don’t know if I’ll get tested or not), but just knowing it’s possible that I have autism has lifted a huge weight from my shoulders.

The thing is that even if it’s not autism per se, it helped me realize that I definitely have some kind of neurodivergence. I’m pretty sure it’s autism–just heavily masked. When I look at a list of the traits, I fit most of them–at least in my heart. Oh, and there have been studdies that suggest that transgender and nonbinary people have a higher rate of autism. Which is very interesting to me.


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Diving deeper into how I think, part two

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Let’s talk more about how my weird brain manifests itself. In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how my neurodivergent brain thinks very differently than how normies think. for the longest time, I thought there was something I could do to make my brain work more normally. I didn’t want to do it, mind, but I always thought it was possible.

I did briefly consider in my early thirties that I might have ADHD. I had the hyperfocus part down pat, but too many of the other symptoms/traits didn’t fit. At that time, I had a great memory and was never late. I did ping from one thing to another, but I was also able to focus–not just hyperfocus. It really was only the hyperfocus and the changing from interest to interest that pinged the ADHD meter.

I can’t stress how much at the time (twenty years ago) that autism was portrayed as a young boy’s diagnosis. It was definitely considered a kid’s thing–and only boys got it. OBVIOUSLY. Most people never even said that because the thought that it could be present in girls was unthinkable.

Side note: This is how medicine works in general, by the way. It’s heavily skewed towards white cis males, so much so that some studies that talk about pregancy use ‘he’ when talking about the patient. This is an extreme example, but it’s littered throughout medical documentation. Also, Asian people need much less meds than do white people–but that isn’t mentioned, either.

I realized this when I tried sleeping pills when I was in my late twenties. The psychiatrist didn’t even examine me. She just listened to me for two minutes, then wrote a scrip for sleeping pills. I felt really seen, I’ll tell you what (that’s sarcasm).

I took a pill and did not wake up for over sixteen hours. Same when I cut it in half, and then in half agaian. No, I didn’t sleep quite as long, but it was still longer than I wanted, and I felt so groggy when I woke up.

When I tried Valerian, I felt as if I could not make my thoughts connect. I was three steps behind, and my tongue felt so thick. I am always chary about taking drugs because they affect me so much. And, sadly. many medical people don’t listen when I say that I react strongly to meds. when I was unconscious in the hospital and the medical professionals were trying to wake me up. My mother said to my medical team that I was more sensitive to drugs because of the Asian thing, but they apparently didn’t listen or pay attention.

Not surprising, really, as medical people are pretty notorious for ignoring information that does not agree with their preconceived notions.

This is one reason that I had no idea I was autistic. I’m AFAB; Asian; have a very high EQ; have excellent social skills; and I don’t do any kind of stimming. That was all I knew about autism, that it was for boys who couldn’t stand still, who stimmed, who thrashed when touched/hugged, who could not maintain eye contact, who could not relate at all to other human beings, and who were did not feel anything at all.


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One last post about sleep–and a plan! (Maybe)

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I’m back to talk about sleep one more time. Here is the post from yesterday in which I talked about sleep, the lack thereof, and how hard it is for me to get said sleep. I’m still getting over my unwise decision to try to stay up 72 hours without researching what could happen if I had actually managed it. I mean, sleep deprivation is considered a method of torture for a reason. I will say I think it’s really funny that I was mainlining coffee when Ian messaged me asking if it was dangerous for me to stay awake for that long. I quickly looked it up and realized it was, then went directly to bed. I fell asleep in less than a minute.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: caffeine does not affect me. I can drink it up to the point of going to bed, and I’ll still be able to fall asleep. As I just noted. In fact, I don’t know why I drink it in the ‘morning’ except that’s what you’re supposed to do.

I have realized that there is just no quick solution. Nor is there any easy solution. I can’t just snap fingers and suddenly be able to sleep well and at the proper time. It’s wishful thinking. I also can’t simply force myself to go to bed at a better time. I’ve proven that that isn’t going to happen, either.

It’s the worst feeling in the world to sit there watching the clock inch forward, knowing I should be in bed, but not doing anything to actually move towards that goal. It doesn’t help that I’m chanting in my brain that I should be going to bed. The other weird thing is how time seems to draaaaag and then suddenly leaps ahead. Time is weird. It just is.

I think another reason I’m having a hard time is that I’m just tired (no pun intended) of dealing with my sleep. I’ve been doing it all my life, and while it’s gotten slightly better and then got a whole lot better after my medical crisis (before slowly sliding back into bad territory). I am resentful that I’ve put so much effort into it for so little return.

On the third hand, it’s been at pretty disparate times, and I may not have put enough concentrated effort into it. I’m a pretty impatient person in some ways, and me trying to find ways to sleep was one of those ways. I did try so many things, but I don’t know if I gave any of them enough time to stick. The problem was that there were some negative results to many of the options, which made me reluctant to keep trying. For instance:


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I’m all about the (lack of) sleep

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Before I start, let me just link to my post about sleep from yesterday here. I don’t want to stress about it, so here it is. When I was in college, I used to sleep four hours a night and then crash for fifteen hours my first night home. It was as if my body was saying, “Oh, I can sleep now? I’ll show you sleep then!” I’m sure it’s quite common–the body breaknig down when it’s safe to do so. I mean, you HAVE to sleep at some point or the body will rebel.

I bring this up because I woke up at 5:30 p.m. today. I was very disoriented and shocked. That was ten hours of sleep–which does not happen to me unless I’m sick. But I’ve really been skimping on my sleep the past month or so, and this was my body’s way of saying that it needed more.

I did not know why my alarm did not ring because I had set it before I went to bed. Or rather, I turned it on and just assumed it was set correctly because it was the day before. I’m talking about an ancient manual clock that I’ve had for probably three decades. I have no idea how it went from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Side Note: I have this weird thing that I do–I set all my manual clocks in the house (and my car) to different times. I have no idea why or how that started, but I’ve been doing it for decades. So the fact that my alarm clock was set at 8 p.m. meant that it was acttually set for 7:17 p.m. Why? No clue. I’ve been doing it forever, and it’s something I consider a harmless idiosyncrasy.

Side Note to the side note: One could spend their whole life trying to fix their flaws. The list is endless, and there’s always something that can be improved. However, something I learned a while back was that there’s a difference between an indiosyncrasy and a flaw. The latter should be worked on whereas the former is fine. Really, it is. We all have things that make us unique, and many of those things are harmless. My having my manual clocks at different times is one of those things.

Another thing I used to do was if I saw one of my clocks being on the quarter hour, I had to count to twenty-five as quickly as possible. Even as I was doing it, I realized that it was silly and not something I should be doing. My therapist at the time asked me what I thought would happen if I didn’t count. I didn’t know, but I was sure it would be terrible.


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