I LOVE sleep. LOVE. LOVE. LOVE IT. I sometimes wake up in the morning and already look forward to going to bed that night. However most nights I can't sleep. It usually takes me a good 45 minutes to an hour to fall asleep and a lot of nights much, much longer. When I do fall asleep I often toss and turn and wake up during the night unable to get back to sleep. You may think my children might be waking me up in the night, although you would be wrong. My children sleep like angels. If only I could sleep like they do!
I go through weird cycles where I can't sleep hardly at all for a few nights or more in a row and then I do occasionally have a great nights when I sleep really good. But those are usually far and few between. I admit I am a high stress person and it's hard for me to turn off my brain when I am trying to go to sleep. My mind keeps going and going and sometimes it gets me all worked up. I usually don't get up and try to do something else. I just try, try, try to sleep, in the hope that I will finally drift off to dreamland. Did I mention that I LOVE sleep? I really do. It just doesn't seem to love me as much. Some nights I will get up and try to do something productive but usually I just lay in bed hoping to fall asleep.
I can pinpoint my Insomnia to two separate events:
The start of my insomnia began in 1994 when I was a senior in high school. The date was January 17th at 4:31 a.m. to be exact. I lived in Southern California and one night (actually early morning) we had a bad earthquake in Northridge, which was about 30 or so miles away. It was a 6.7 on the ricter scale which doesn't sound that big, but they say that the ground acceleration was one of the highest ever recorded instrumentally in an urban area in all of North America. I woke up that morning in a complete panic with the bed shaking (hint: never own a water bed in an earthquake area), pictures falling off the walls, glass shattering and crashing noises.
After that night I couldn't sleep. I was terrified to go to bed. I could take naps when it was light out but at night it wasn't easy. I got on some sleep medication prescribed by a doctor and that helped a bit until my body got used to it and then I was back to square one. It didn't help that during my insomnia I moved away from home and went to college. Having a roommate (although I loved them dearly) didn't help with the sleep issues. I am a super light sleeper to begin with so every little noise would wake me up. That is when I started using ear plugs and I invested in a noise machine that made white noise to drown out the little sounds, which helped some. (I still use earplugs but Chris has weaned me from my noise machine, WHAAA!)
The second event occurred my first night out of the dorms. (Mom, if you are reading this you probably should just skip this part.) My friend Christy and I moved into an apartment off campus with two girls we didn't know. One of the reason I choose this apartment was because we all had separate rooms and I thought it would help me sleep better. In the transition of moving in Christy and I choose our rooms. One of the girls who was moving out was leaving the next day and had all her stuff packed up. Her room was the room I was going to live in so she was nice enough to sleep that night in a different room since the other two girls who were moving in weren't coming in for a few days. So I moved all my stuff in and got settled. I was so excited to have my own room and my own quiet sleeping space!!! In the middle of the night around 2ish maybe(??) I opened my eyes, and standing over me was a very tall, very big man (Mom, I told you to stop reading, I probably NEVER told you this, obviously for good reason!). I was TERRIFIED!!! He was whispering the other gals name whose room this was before. In a weak, frightening voice I said, "I'm not her." Instead of leaving right then he proceeds to tell me that he came over to say goodbye to her since he was leaving to go home and knew he wouldn't see her in the morning. How he got in, I don't know. Did he have a key??? Was the house door unlocked? He was talking to me like we were in a complete normal situation and asking me my name and such. Lovely, could you please get out of my room!!!??? Needless to say that didn't help my insomnia issue. In fact I still have issues with that experience and often if I go to bed before Chris does and he comes in the room I wake up in terror and scream. I also have a little OCD about making sure our doors are always locked!
I seriously need therapy. Good Night. Or not.
10 comments:
Oh my gosh! I never knew this! And DUDE those are some freaky stories! (So freaky that I was forced to use the word DUDE in all caps!)
I can definitely have trouble switching my brain off (especially if I happen to wake up in the middle of the night). But the worst period of insomnia for me was when I was pregnant with Maggie. I was existing on four or fewer hours of sleep a night for weeks at a time. My biggest fear was falling asleep while driving home from my job in Lodi. I remember that Toni H. found out about it and she was also struggling with insomnia. Sometimes I'd see an email come across at 2 or 4 o'clock in the morning... just Toni asking how I was doing and checking in. It was the sweetest thing and I'll never forget how her support and empathy helped me through a crazy time... because insomnia will make a person CRAZY. Or at least that's how I always felt. Like a total CRAZY person. And that's saying a lot because even on a good day I'm pretty crazy. (But usually just with lower case letters. Most days.)
So DUDE try to get some sleep tonight. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!
I never knew this about you either ... you're good at keeping secrets!! And I'm so sorry because that must be so awful. I can't believe Chris made you get rid of the noise machine ... no fair.
If you think you seriously need therapy, it must be time to see Wicked again :)
PS. I'm sure you've already tried everything under the sun, but does music help? Sometimes falling asleep to some sweet old school Dave Matthews music does the trick for me.
Maybe I just needed to blog about it because I slept fairly well the last two nights! Whoo-hoo!
Larisa, I have tried music, and sadly it just stimulates me more. However, I can fall asleep on the couch watching General Conference pretty easily. Go figure. :)
Melissa, I am already crazy. It's debatable if it's the insomnia or not...
Sound machine makes it seem like one of those things that recreated a light drizzle in the rainforest or some calm waves hitting the beach. This was more like the static on the TV from Poltergist except twice as loud because she had the earplugs in!
I don't remember the creepy guy either but that is so scary. I am so sorry about the sleep sweetie. Maurie can't sleep either. Maybe its me!!!!!
How did I never know about any of this either?? Those are some scary stories. I think I'm with Chris, though. I wouldn't like the static.
I hope it improves! That must be awful.
Wow! I'm impressed that you still get up and exercise every morning. I'm grumpy when I don't get enough sleep and I surely wouldn't be motivated enough to exercise! I fall asleep pretty easily...now if I can just get all my kids to sleep through the night at the same time for more than one night in a row. Ugh!
I think it was good that you wrote about it--maybe talking to someone may help more. I know after Gordy's divorce, he was having a tough time and went to a councilor for help and it worked! Have you checked if you have sleep apnea? You are so connected with all your kids that maybe you have a tough time winding down--have you tried Yoga?? I have been at a yoga class three times now--I'M SOOOO STIFF!! I can't believe what people can do!! But at the end we lay in the dark and just breathe and it would be easy to fall asleep.... just a thought or two. I'm surprised you're so thin...people that don't get enough sleep gain weight easy--you must have a fast metabolism..... take care!!
Can I borrow your white noise machine? That sounds perfect.
Post a Comment