Posts Tagged ‘insomnia’
Everything is dull and grey and out-of-focus, the horrible light of the early hours, when everything seems realer and duller and more miserable than at any other time of the day.
I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know what I’m doing.
At work, I’ve been reacquainted with a previous boss, and he’s so fucking good at his job. He’s trying to help me. Gently pushing, encouraging, praising. Making me feel like my contribution is worthwhile. Setting me special tasks – complex, challenging, new – because he knows I’d get bored otherwise, and if I get bored then I just give up. He wants me to have an aim, and he wants to help me move towards it. I don’t know how to tell him what I want. Sometimes I want to yell at everyone to stop movement, stop progress, just wait, stay still for a moment so I can gather my thoughts, this perpetual lurching forward makes me feel sick. Sometimes I want to collapse in a heap and finally admit out loud: I lack drive because I lack confidence. I lack direction because I have yet to convince myself that my future exists. I only survive by living completely in the present.
At home, everything is the same. I don’t have the energy to give details. It’s all just the same. Exhausting just to think about.
I feel…separate. Can’t connect with anyone. I can chat but not talk. I can make people laugh and listen to their problems and give them advice, but if they want to hang out with someone, it won’t be me they choose. I don’t know how to make a meaningful connection with anyone, and I don’t even know if I want to. I’ve spent my whole life struggling with that one: do I notice the lack of closeness because I want it, or because everyone else expects me to have it? I think I could probably live quite happily alone, never connecting with anyone, if only people didn’t insist on reminding me as regularly possible how weird that is.
I can’t sleep. I can’t think. Everything is a dream. A dull, pointless dream.
I’m too afraid to move.
Posted on: September 17, 2012
It’s 11:30pm, Monday. I’ve been awake since approximately 9:00am, Sunday.
It’s been a long time since this has happened. I thought my sleeping problems were largely solved.
I can feel my heart racing and there’s this tingling sensation just beneath my skin. It’s old and familiar and I’m not quite sure how to get away from it. Last night I watched the light go from grey to black to grey again as I paced my room and held imaginary conversations in my head and painted my nails and Googled random bullshit and regularly lay down and closed my eyes and tried to sleep and felt every breath and pulse and muscle shift for what seemed like a century, then rolled over and checked the time and it had only been 10 minutes.
I need to get out of this. I went to work today and things were fine, but I can’t do it for another day, even if I get an hour or two it’s not really going to be enough. I need to pull the plug or pour water on the circuitboard or something, anything to shut me down for a bit so I can rest and then maybe when I wake up I will feel more in control of myself.
Coincidence or causation?
Posted on: September 13, 2010
Ah, that old chestnut.
My parents are on holiday.
Over the past few days, there’s been a noticeable change in me. I’m not sleeping (hence why this is being written at 6am. I turned the light off, I went to bed, I couldn’t stop thinking or moving or distracting myself, so I thought fuck it, I’ll come here and write about it and maybe that will wear me out). I’m eating less, too. I feel tingly and jittery and slightly irritable. I’ve been writing stories (1000 words is the magic number. After that – and often before – , I get bored or distracted or decide it’s rubbish or it just stops), and over the weekend I went shopping, and spent hundreds of pounds on clothes (and this is me. I live in natty old jeans).
So which is it? Coincidence or causation? Am I ridiculously hyperactive etc. because my parents are away – no enforced routine (might as well eat when they cook, might as well go to bed before they get suspicious), no fear of being shouted at, just a general lack of arsiness – or is it all just a coincidence?
I don’t know.
I’m not sure what it means, if it’s causation. Probably that I’ll never be able to leave. If a few days away from them sends me into overdrive, then I doubt I can be trusted away from them permanently. But if it’s coincidence, then it’s just one more things that I can’t explain, can’t stick a label on and tidy it away into a box. And it means it might happen again when my parents are here, and that scares me, because I know they would be angry with me if they saw me like this – my mother, especially, isn’t fond of me showing any more animation than is absolutely necessary.
Yeah, you read that right. I have a job. I start in three weeks.
It’s not necessarily ideal. Not particularly exciting.
But it seems interesting, challenging but not demoralisingly difficult, and it seems like a happy place to be, full of friendly, laid-back people. And there’s the money, of course – not brilliant, but it’s comfortably above minimum wage, with plenty of potential bonuses. And it seems like something I could do – a job where I could actually cope and learn and have ideas.
And, well, I’m not entirely sure what I want to do with the rest of my life, so I might as well fill the time while I’m deciding doing something that’ll look good on my CV (experience, and training, and proving that I am actually slightly employable). And if I never make a decision, at least I have a job. Read the rest of this entry »
All over the place.
Posted on: June 3, 2010
Gaaaah.
Posted on: May 14, 2010
Awake until the sun comes up. Try to sleep. Lay awake for an hour or more. Drift off. Wake up before most sane people’s alarms go off.
I went to my exam. I’ve spent all my time, including that in the exam room, pretty much in denial. This isn’t an exam. I’m not doing exams. This doesn’t count. It can’t. Even when I’ve tried to make it real, tried to make myself care, it’s not quite working.
Things are starting to get a bit bleak again.
Curling up on my bathroom floor, the coldest, darkest, smallest place I can go. Wishing there was somewhere a hundred times colder, darker, smaller. Wanting to compress it all and stuff it in a tiny box so that the rest of the space around me isn’t contaminated. Blankness and tiredness and bone-deep inaction, interspersed with pointless pacing of my room and bursts of tears. What am I doing?
And the ever-approaching creep of death, death, death. Look the other way. Don’t let it consume me. Hum to myself and pretend it’s not there but I know really, and however much I try to hold it at arm’s length, sooner or later it starts to make sense.
Achievement or madness?
Posted on: May 7, 2010
Over the past 17 hours, I have:
- had three hours of sleep/sort of sleep/trying to sleep
- been keeping up to day with the election coverage
- watched ‘Outnumbered’
- had a bit of a rest
- written over 4000 words
Now, I’m not sure if those words are any good. In fact, I suspect they’re a bit crap. BUT that’s two pieces of coursework done!
And I feel energised, and vaguely hopeful, and wide awake which is good because that means I can stay up for the rest of the day and maybe possibly SLEEP AT NIGHT which would be strange and wonderful but probably unlikely.
I’m not entirely sure if this is a case of Laura Finally Gets Her Act Together, or just one more episode in the endless saga of Laura Does Strange Things Sometimes.
But I’m not going to question it, because chances are high that I’m going to get more than 0%, which means I’m benefiting from doing it. 🙂
Maybe not so okay after all.
Posted on: April 26, 2010
It’s just gone half past five in the morning, it’s already not properly dark, and I haven’t been to sleep.
I don’t know what to do. I just keep crying. Read the rest of this entry »
Sigh.
Posted on: February 2, 2010
Gaah. That’s what I have to say.
I’m irritable. I’m pissed off. I’m speaking and acting without thinking.
I’m too twitchily awake to actually do anything, but I still thought it was a perfectly good idea to volunteer to (idea, volunteer: rhyme…)
Right. I volunteered to format my group’s presentation for our seminar on Friday. I reckon it’s the least I could do considering what a bad group member I am, always missing stuff etc. and talking too loud (I could see them looking at me strangely, but I can’t make my voice behave).
Last night, I eventually passed out, only to wake up three hours or so later.
I’m very tempted to go to the doctor and say “PLEASE MAKE ME SLEEP”. But then they’d start asking pesky questions about how my mood is, and I’d probably just scream, “IT’S FUCKING FINE. JUST KNOCK ME OUT BEFORE MY HEAD EXPLODES”. At which point they’d probably call the police. And then my head would explode, which would at least prove me right.
I’m aware that I’m kind of all over the place at the minute. I’m trying to calm myself down. Trying to be still and calm, trying to think things through, trying to just laugh at myself when I’m so startled by little noises that I drop things.
It’s just…sleep. I need some sleep.
Edit: I got an email from the mental health advisor, offering an appointment. I burst into tears. I don’t fucking know why. I suppose that means I’m going to have to actually speak about this out loud. Admittedly, probably in the vaguest way possible.
I don’t know how to feel. Part of me is panicking – I don’t want to speak, I don’t want to ask for help, I don’t want anybody to know, I should never have contacted her. Part of me is upset – I feel guilty, I feel like a disappointment, I feel like I’m giving in. And a small part of me is relieved. Just that small, ridiculous, naive part of my mind that is thinking maybe something will change. And of course, that just makes the part of me that’s sad even sadder, and adds a bit of self-hating anger in there, too – I hate my hope, I hate that I can’t cope and am desperate for something else.
Loopy, Lonely and Lost 
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