No Rest for the Wicked
Posted by Splendwhore
I went to sleep at 5 in the morning, so I admit I was a little disorientated when the alarm blared to life at 10AM. Not yet ready to join the world of the living, I rolled out of bed to seek and destroy aforementioned bringer of noise. Five short hours after I had laid my exhausted body on the softest bed I’ve ever owned, I’m up and about and looking like the living dead. Bloodshot eyes, a little drool crusted in the corner of my mouth; Yep, definitely zombie material. Just because I stayed up too late again doesn’t mean I shouldn’t wake up at a decent hour though. I’m pretending I can function like a regular person, isn’t it cute?
I haven’t slept right since my adopted father died 9 years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever made that connection until now. He committed suicide, hung himself from our ceiling fan; I was 11. The next three years were a roller coaster ride of depression and denial. I knew he was dead, but it just didn’t sink in. The dreams of course didn’t help. I dreamt almost every single night, and he was always there. He’d come home like nothing was wrong, like he’d just been away on vacation. He would sit down with us at dinner or watch TV, and for a little while, everything seemed right again. Then I’d wake up. Then I’d be struck by this overwhelming force called reality. It was confusing, to say the least.That was probably the happiest and most destructive influence in my life at the time. The dreams always ended one of two ways. The first and more favorable way is I would wake up immediately. The second, more frequent manner, was some kind of symbolic bullshit which was truly scary, and remains so even to this day. In the dream, we’d go upstairs together and into my parent’s room. It wasn’t a bedroom anymore though, as there was no bed of which to speak. Instead, in the middle of the room, as its only identifying marker, there was a large 3-seater sofa. My father would sit me down on this sofa, insisting he had something urgent to divulge. He never got very far. The last thing that usually happened was this: He’d open his coat, and dissolve into a huge swarm of long, skinny, black flying insects. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced, watching one of the people I loved most turn into this unrecognizable black mass and swarm around the room. Sometimes I wonder if it’s why I can’t sleep right.
I guess it’s incorrect to say I haven’t slept right since he died. I just haven’t had any semblance of a stable sleep schedule. It changes every 1-3 weeks. I’m constantly up at varying hours, for unreliable amounts of time. There will be points where I’m waking up at 6AM, and it feels so damn good to be that much closer to what resembles normal again. And then, then I’ll start to slip. I’ll stay up later and later, trying to accomplish god knows what. Then I’ll be on the polar opposite end of the scale. I’ll be up until 9AM, sleeping till 10:00 at night. I’ve been known to sleep for 18 hours straight. It’s not a common occurrence. My max. is usually 12, but it still happens. Then I get the days where I can’t sleep at all. I’ll lie in bed for hours, just trying to fall asleep or at least rest my weary body. I’ve stayed up for two days straight and then gotten three hours of sleep and been fine. The weird thing is, it’s just a part of who I am now. I couldn’t tell you if it was a decision I made when he died, a choice I keep making to this day, or if maybe it’s just a biological or emotional response to the trauma. What I can tell you is this: It doesn’t matter if I’ve slept for 20 minutes or going on 15 hours, I’m tired. I am always so fucking tired. I wonder if he was just tired too?
When my time comes to leave this world, I hope I’ll finally find rest. I’m not sure I could deal with insomnia in the afterlife.
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I’ve been suffering from anxiety and it’s really been affecting my sleep as well. I can understand where you are coming from. So far, I’ll get small glimpse of normal sleep but it will just change frequently.
I also have strange dreams and I feel that is the hardest part for me to deal with. You can’t just change your dreams or make them go away. Mine will range to something simple to something scary – some form of anxiety dream (that’s what my counselor calls them). I have never had reacurring dreams until the summer and then I would often have dreams with some form of insect in them or that I would be walking around in a long white dress with a train on it to sit down and when I did, I would notice bunches of insects crawling all over the train of the dress. Another one would be that I would have dreams that I am fighting to breathe.
.-= Seaofneptune´s last blog ..Win a Tantus Echo: =-.
I have sleep problems, too. I’ve been trying to cut back on caffeine and taking melatonin with little effect. I have the same patterns where I just stay up later and later. I have even tried some prescription sleep aids before but it didn’t seem to help but it’s probably something I will look into again.
.-= Adriana´s last blog ..For Your Nymphomation Adult Toybox =-.
SeaofNeptune, I wonder if there is some connection between the dreams and an inability to properly sleep? Your dreams are actually your subconscious, either reliving events of the day or trying to send you a message. Often times they can be about things that are troubling us that we aren’t confronting in our waking lives. Dreams can seem crazy, random, and all types of weird. But if you take the time to interpret them, you’ll find that the most abstract thing or action in your dream can actually relate to something that’s bothering you that you are not addressing.
For instance, I once had a dream that there was a huge copper pipe shoved down my throat. My whole family was there, dressed and looking like the them from the past, and it was an intervention. My grandmother stood up and gave me some great lecture about how if they could change in one night for me, I could surely change for them. She urged me to remove the pipe from my throat, and I did. As soon as it was gone, I was unable to breath. Gasping for air like some floundering fish on shore, I awoke from the dream equally unable to breath. It really disturbed me, so I decided to interpret it using a free online dream dictionary. Minuscule, abstract details like the pipe being made of copper and shoved down my throat, or my family having regressed all slowly but surely started to tell me a story. It turned out, I was scared about my upcoming classes my Grandmother had forced me to take. I’m self employed, and much of my time is spent in my work (which I love). The dream recounted my fear of not being able to commit fully to work or school, of repeating my procrastination methods of the past and ultimately a fear of failing. I was afraid I would be exhausted trying to keep up both aspects of my life. After figuring out that was what the dream meant, I felt lighter, happier, more determined than ever to do well in both work and school. Sometimes our dreams are just asking us to confront something so that we can do better in our lives and move on from a destructive thought process or behavior. Maybe you should take a little time to examine your own dreams. It might help improve your sleep, if only a little. =)