Insomnia

I've been well acquained with the wee hours of the morning my whole life. My mother used to tell stories about how, as a baby, I never wanted to go to sleep - my little motor just kept on going, wouldn't sit still, couldn't go to sleep, my eyes would be droopy, I'd be cranky as hell, but I just would NOT (or was it COULD NOT?) go to sleep, so Mom would have to "spank" me to make me cry so I would finally, FINALLY cry myself to sleep. (By "spank", I mean she basically just swatted me on the butt once just loud enough to make a noise that scared me and hurt my feelings, then I would cry myself to sleep). This means I figure I've been an insomniac my whole life.

The most insidious, horrible thing about insomnia, surprisingly, seems to me to not be the actual lack of sleep. For the most part, I feel better after 2 or 3 hours of sleep than I do after 8 straight. True, eventually my body crashes and just has to get more sleep, but - for the most part - the lack of actual sleeping hours isn't what makes insomnia suck so bad. It's the doubt, the self-recriminations at 3 a.m. that come slinking into my room to torment me. In the bright light of day, I'm fairly able to put one foot in front of the other and not stress too much about past, stupid mistakes. At three a.m., though, every mistake I ever made, all the way back to when I was in elementary school, comes to perch on the side of my bed and tell me what a dumbass I am. "You broke up with so-and-so, and now you're all alone. What if he was supposed to be the one, and YOU screwed it up? I mean, look at you, when's the last time you were on an actual date?" is a familiar refrain. As is, "What the hell do you think you're doing? Do you actually think you can be a good mother when you can't even manage to do the dishes consistently every night?" is another. I even get flogged for stupid or mean things I said to my sister and mother as a child, things I never meant in a million years, idle childish threats and spewage that - if only I'd known how quickly they'd be gone - I never would have said or done. So I go back over (and over and over and over) these same mistakes, wondering if they ever forgave me. And of course, it's too late to ask them now. Yet in the light of day, these are not thoughts I would normally have. I get so tired of my own thoughts, mistakes and what-ifs that I grab a book and dive in, struggling to block out all those voices in the wee hours until finally, FINALLY, at 4 or 5 a.m. the book slips out of my hands and I fall asleep, only to have to get up 2 hours later.

I sometimes don't know whether I should laugh or cry when I come to work and all I hear from coworkers is "Gee, you look tired." No, I'm not tired. I wish that's all it was. I'm drained. I'd give anything to only be tired for once. I'll take tired over being sucked dry from things I said or did eons ago anyday. At least you can do something about being tired.

2 h 45 m...

is not enough sleep. That's how long (well, short) I slept last night. What was just an inability to turn my head too far from side to side due to extremely tight, tense muscles turned into a full-blown stiffness and muscle pain over my whole body into the wee hours of the morning. Due to this, and the quaking and shaking of my muscles due to said extreme tightness/tenseness, I didn't sleep very much at all last night. I finally passed out around 4:00 a.m. then had to get up to get ready for work at 6:45 a.m. An almost-scalding hot shower helped some of the stiffness this morning, but I still cannot move my head from side to side or up/down, nor can I stretch any of my muscles out like I normally can. If this keeps up, I'll go see the doctor about it. It's just weird. It started Friday as a very slight tightening of my neck muscles - I could still move normally, but I got a bit of a twinge when I turned my head from side to side. Saturday, I had less movement, but still not too bad. Sunday morning, I couldn't move my head hardly at all, and by Sunday night my whole body was so tight I felt like a rubber band about to snap. Took some ibuprofen to no avail. Got desperate and took some old Rx pain medication/muscle relaxant combo from an old, unrelated injury. Prescription was several years old though, so I guess it had expired. No relief whatsoever. So now I sit here at work, very sleepy, unable to move my head hardly at all, and wishing I were at home in bed. I'm sure I'll get over it though. Just had to whine about it for a while, that's all. :-)