I can’t remember the last time I had a regular, steady sleep rhythm. At the least it’s been months. At most it’s been several years. I know that at least one contributing factor is my ongoing battle with anxiety, though it’s been a few weeks since the last time I woke up in the middle of the night sick to my stomach and shaking from a panic attack.
Part of the problem is that I have an increasingly difficult time getting my mind to turn off long enough to rest. Some significant percentage of my mental bandwidth is dedicated to managing my anxiety, using my coping methods to force rationality over the lies my depression and anxiety want to keep telling me. But there’s also a large portion of my mind that is constantly thinking about all the things I both need and want to do. Between these two things, my mind races a 12 miles a second almost all the time, and that has a tendency to interfere with my sleep.
Today I’ve been awake since 3:30am. This isn’t really all that uncommon for me anymore. My sum total sleep for the night was 4.5 hours, also not altogether uncommon. The problem is that when I wake up in the night, I come fully awake, and good luck trying to slow my mind down enough at that point to drift back into dreamland.
I try, though. Oh, how I try. But it doesn’t take long to realize that sleep won’t be returning anytime soon. So, I rolled myself out of bed around 4:30 and have set about starting my day. I’ve already done a little management for Dragonspire Media this morning, mostly emails to clients, along with various other minutiae necessary to my general subsistence. I’m working on planning out my day even now, making my lists in true Architect style, with the hopes that staying busy today will stave off the exhaustion I know I will be feeling later.
Because here’s the thing. I can’t take naps. My sleep disorder won’t allow it. Whenever I try, it’s like rolling the dice — at disadvantage (thank you, D&D, for that reference) — as to whether or not I’ll feel better or worse when I wake up. More often that not, far more often, I feel worse because the sleep I get while napping is not quality sleep. So as much as possible I avoid naps with the hopes that I have better sleep at night once I take my sleep meds. Again, this is a bit of a craps shoot because there are no guarantees these days, not with how busy my mind always is.
And the irony of the situation is that this has become more of a problem only since beginning my recovery three years ago. The more stable I become overall, the more control I exert over my life and my mental illness, the busier my mind becomes — and thus the more difficult it becomes to sleep for longer than a few hours at a time.
Still, I far prefer a little sleeplessness to the crushing despair and hopelessness of depression. Yes, I still have my ‘off’ days. I have my emotional breakdowns from anxiety. I have my struggles, both large and small, but it’s all part of the journey. I hate the constant battles and fights within my own head. I wish I could be free from them. But at this point in my life, that isn’t meant to be. It’s possible it will be like this the rest of my life. And if so, then so be it. There are lessons to be learned from all this, skills and knowledge to be gleaned from the pain and suffering.
And it will continue to make me a better person for it. Growth only comes through pain and hardship. This I have learned well. We don’t grow and become better versions of ourselves when everything is sun and roses. It’s only in fighting the fight — and winning — that we learn, that the rough edges are polished off who we are. And if going through pain and hardship makes me a better, stronger version of myself and gives me the tools to live life better, more richly, and even to reach out and help others struggling along the same road, then it’s worth losing a little sleep over.
