Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: night owl

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

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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Why the fuck am I like this?

I have sleep issues; I’ve had them since I was a kid. I still remember when I was six or seven, I would stay up until midnight to read. How? I would place a t-shirt in the crack under my door and then just use a flashlight to read under my covers. Ever since I was seven, I did not go to bed before midnight. I couldn’t. That’s just what I did. That’s always been my sleep pattern, and it’s not something that I can easily change. Any time I try to make a substantial change, I just find myself draaaaaaaagging myself back to my normal time.

The only time I slept a normal people schedule was when I was in the hospital for my medical crisis and for a few months after. Then, I was going to bed at 10 p.m. and getting up at 6 a.m. By a year after I had my medical crisis, I had reverted to going to bed around 2 or 3 and getting up eight hours later. I was the most rested I’ve been in my life. Granted, it took a major medical trauma to get me to that point AND tons of powerful drugs, but still.

I have tried to rein it in and go to bed at a more reasonable time. It has failed miserably every time. I have given up on it, but I’m trying to make sure I don’t go too much further in the sleeping late at night realm. Then again, I have toyed with the idea of pushing my sleep schedule forward to lap back to a normal people decent time.

I just can’t do it. I have tried and tried, but I just haven’t been able to do it. I can pull it back bit by bit, but then I’ll lose it all plus a couple of hours in the next night. So, let’s say I was going to bed at 4 a.m. I would be able to pull it back to 3:30 a.m. for a couple nights, then 3 a.m. for the next couple. I might be able to inch it to 2 a.m., but then a few nights later, it would be up to 5 a.m. again.

I am currently going to bed around 7 a.m. I’m setting myself a limit of 2:30 p.m. to get up, which means I’m not getting a full eight hours. Today, I had an appointment at 10 a.m., so I tried to go to bed early; I really did. I wanted to get to bed by 3 a.m. I think I managed five a.m, but just. I was going to get up at 9:30 a.m., but I woke up at ten to 9 a.m. That’s how I do when I absolutely have to get up at at any given time. And I’m still up. Why? because that’s just how the fuck I am.


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