My sleep is fucked. It’s big time fucked. In fact, I should be trying to sleep pnow, but I am not doing it, obviously.
I have always had a bad relationship with sleep. Fraught, I might even say. It started when I was a little kid because I just could not sleep during the ‘regular’ hours when a kid was supposed too sleep.
I found out it was in part a thyroid issue, but getting that taken care of did not correct my sleep. Fast-forward decades later, and through Taiji, I managed to get six-and-a-half hours a night and only waking up twice during the night.
It wasn’t great, but it was the best I had ever had in my life.
Then I had my medical crisis when after I turned fifty. The one plus of that harrowing experience was that it righted my sleep schedule. I was so drugged up in the hoospital and exhausted from what I went through, I slept nearly all the time while I was in the hospital.
When I got home, I would go to bed at ten in the evening and get up at six. Then, my schedule slowly started reverting to my norm. Ideally, I would like to go to bed around three or four and get up eight hours later.
I keep blowing past that time, though.
I wish I had gotten it checked out when I was a kid. I know I could now, and I should, but it’s difficult to get me to the doctor. I do my once a year because I have to get my blood checked for my thyroid, but that’s about it.
A friend suggested that I do something drastic to get my sleep back on track. I have thought about going to see my two besties in Philly as a way of disrupting what I have going on. I have not flown since my medical crisis. Well, since before that, really, as it was preceded by the pandemic. The last time I flew was in 2019, and I’m not sure if I want to do it again.
I hate flying for several reasons. One, people like to talk to me regardless of if I want to talk to them or not. I have that kind of face, I guess, that just invites conversation. In addition, I’ve had more than one person ask me to switch seats, which I hate.. I specifically get a ticket as soon as I can because I need an aisle seat. I need to be able to sleep without being disturbed–well, I did in te past. Why? I get motion sickness when I travel. Back when I used to take Dramamine, I would sleep for the entire flight–even when I flew from LA to Taiwan.
Once I discovered the wonders of ginger, I didn’t have to use Dramamine any longer, thankfully. I still preferred to sit in the aisle, though, because I needed easy access to the toilet. And because I liked it better than either a middle seat or a window seat.
I hate being close to other people (physically), and I hate breathing in other people’s recycled air–especially post-pandemic. I hate being squeezed in like sardines, and I hate uncomfortably tight seat belts.
Even with the miracle of ginger, I don’t like flying. I’m glad it quells my motion sickness, but I still don’t feel great when I fly. I admire my brother and his girlfriend because they fly with ease–and they do it a lot.
Back to my sleep. I think I’m going to do something else drastic. There are two different things I have heard of. The first is pushing your sleep schedule forward by an hour every few days rather than back. So, for example, if I go to bed at 6 a.m., then I should plan on going to bed at 7 a.m. rather than 5 a.m. Then a few days later, 7 a.m. The idea is to keep going until I reach the time I want to go to bed.
I’ll be honest. If I could go to bed consistently at 4 a.m., I would be satisfied with that for now. I don’t know why I went from a fairly stable 3 a.m./4 a.m.. as a bedtime to blowing right past it. I would say that stress, depression, and anxiety have been a part of the reason, but not necessarily the whole reason. Or even the biggest reason. I really don’t know, though, why it’s happening.
I do think it’s partly that my biorhythms work best at night. I feel truly alive at three in the morning in a way I don’t at, say, ten in the morning. And no matter how tired I am in the late evening, I perk right up at midnight.
I really take issue with the idea that people who prefer night to morning are somehow defective. It’s called Delayed Sleep-Wake Phase Disorder, and I strongly protest at slapping ‘disorder’ onto the end of that phrase. I read a study, and it noted that people who didn’t sleep during ‘normal’ hours were more depressed, anxious, unhappy, etc.
But, as we all know, correlation does not mean causation. It could be that since the world runs on morning people time, always having to be awake at the wrong time takes it toll on a person’s mental health. It takes so much more effort to be functional at six in the morning than at midnight unless I’m awake at the former time because I had been up all night long.
Also, if I have to be up at a certain time, no matter the time, my sleep is shit. My body is just primed to wake up at the smallest noise, and I hate it. Plus, it’s difficult for me to fall back asleep as it was in the olden days.
I have to think of a way to fix my sleep before it gets any worse. I do not want to go back to how I was before my medical crisis. I would be fine with going to bed at four in the morning and getting up at noon if I could keep to that. That is my goal for the new year for now. I’ll reassess in a month or two into the new year to see if I need to adjust it.