Excuses…

Today, I am exhausted, physically and mentally. The physical exhaustion comes from having spent three days painting part of the house. It found it very demanding as I am not used to this level of physical work. Although I am fairly fit, I walk a lot and practise yoga neither had prepared me for the sheer hard work of painting,  particularly  the high up parts where I was on tiptoe on a ladder stretching to my fullest height.

It was my decision to paint, I got fed up looking at grubby walls which no amount of scrubbing would return to their original pristine state, I knew it would be tiring but had not expected that, at a point when my body was screaming out for sleep, my mind would decide to whirl around incessantly all night long. I had become used to sleeping at least six hours every night for the past few weeks and now to be awake in the early hours, once again, is shattering.

I feel unsettled again, not sure how to continue. I had decided to spend a year writing, to write as much as possible and to enter competitions and submit to magazines but chronic exhaustion has meant I have little energy to read, write or indeed do any of the things I need to do. Housework and children take priority and what little energy I have has been saved for them.

My youngest, who has been having a difficult time at school, seems to be off ill at least once a week. My eldest is finished school for the summer and is quite demanding in time and attention, wanting to talk when I want silence or to write, having her friends around, the time I had set aside to write is being eroded from all angles. That and my lack of motivation does not help, it is difficult to be coherent let alone intelligent when you are struggling to keep your eyes open.

I have done some writing and entered a few competitions but based on my results so far I am not holding my breath. But then again, I probably have not tried as hard as I should have. Perhaps I am using insomnia as an excuse. An excuse not to commit, having failed spectacularly to achieve a dream I am afraid of putting myself out there again.

And maybe, when you come right down to it, I may just not be good enough, I could be on a wild goose chase.

 

 

The elusive goal…

No, I am not chasing stars, trying to catch a rainbow or score for a famous football team. The goal that eludes me, is I’m afraid to say something far more mundane and basic. Something that most people take for granted, that they wouldn’t give a second thought to, that comes so naturally to every living thing in the animal kingdom. Yes, I am talking once again about sleep.

How I yearn to go to bed and close my eyes, to wake up and find it is a new day. To greet each morning feeling renewed and refreshed, with joy and enthusiasm. Instead I spend night alternately tossing or turning in a fruitless quest to sleep, or wandering around the house hoping that I may just reach a new level of exhaustion that will send me off into the unknown for at least a few hours.

Other people I know look forward to their days, they make plans for the weekend and nights out, I concentrate on merely getting through each day. I have to set reminders on my phone so I remember to go places, collect children or take them to their activities. I even have one to remind me to do the shopping. I am so tired that I will pick up the phone and forget who I was about to ring, I lose my train of thought half way through a sentence and often will have no idea what I even began to talk about. I ask questions then immediately forget the answers.

At the moment, just putting one foot in front of the other takes a tremendous effort, the kids keep asking why I have walked or come on the bus to collect them, why can’t we use the car. We can’t use the car because I don’t feel safe driving it, even locally around routes I know well. I am afraid that I may drop off at the wheel, or lose concentration, and subsequently control of the car. My reflexes are not what they should be, and behind the wheel of a lethal machine is the last place I want to put them to the test. Besides which, how could I ever live with myself if something happened to one of the children while I was driving, so we walk or use the bus.

I get through each day, doing the minimum of housework, cooking etc., only the very essential things get done. My whole being craves sleep, my mind is befuddled and confused but will not settle. I have tried everything, yoga, aromatherapy massages, no caffeine, no chocolate, vitamins, herbal remedies, hypnosis CDs, binaural beats. Every remedy I can lay my hands on, but so far nothing has worked. I have had one night’s sleep in the last month and that actually left me feeling worse. My GP refuses to prescribe anything that may give me a night’s sleep, too addictive apparently. It is “probably just a phase, a time in my life”, something I need to learn to accept as I get older and my body changes. I wonder how many doctors would accept night after night of lying awake wondering when sleep will come?

I need a reason, a cure not excuses. So that is my goal for now, I am giving up on trying to sleep and going to focus on finding out why it so eludes me, if it is just that time of life then surely there must be something that be done about it. I see no reason why in this age of knowledge and technology I should have to suffer so.

 

Stuck

A day of sadness and sorrow, I cannot stem the tears nor can I fathom what is causing them. I know in part it is due to lack of sleep but tired as I feel exhaustion could not cause this well of despair that threatens to overflow every second.

My life has changed in so many ways over the last two years, I no longer have a job, so have nowhere to go each day, nothing to aim for. As my children grow and move on my social circle has diminished, most of my friends were women I would meet at the school gates and we would go for coffee or a walk but I have no need now to be at the school gates, independence has meant that even the last of children is going to school by herself. These women I thought of as friends have busy lives, forever running from pillar to post with little or no time to catch up so we rarely see each other these days, we exchange the odd email or text but it is not the same as a chat over a cup of coffee.

I know I need to get out there, to make new friends but I seem to have lost whatever social skills I once possessed, I find it increasingly difficult to talk to strangers, to make contact, and would never ask someone I have just met to go for coffee or for their telephone number. Others have suggested volunteering but again my chronic shyness would make it extremely difficult for me to work in a retail outfit or anywhere I will have to deal with the general public. As I seem to have no control over my emotions at the moment I am terrified of bursting into tears at inappropriate times making a fool of myself and alienating others.

I need someone to take me under their wing, to comfort me, and cosset me, to hold me and cherish me as my mother should have done for me as a child and my husband should be doing for me now. As neither will accept that depression exists, that I am not just wallowing in self pity that is unlikely to happen. My counsellor tells me I need to do it for myself, but I am not strong enough. Years of being told I was useless, good for nothing, never living up to others’ expectations have left me feeling worthless, unworthy of love, of kind words or deeds. I give far more than I have ever taken in life, I always put my husband and children’s needs before mine yet they never do the same for me. It is taken for granted that I will be there to listen, to help no matter what time of night or day yet the same courtesy is not extended to me. Selfish though it may sound I need a break from the duties and responsibilities of my life but I have no one to take over those tasks so I am stuck on this never-ending wheel of despair.

 

Night train

Night train,

crashing through my brain,

never stops,

round the clock,

always on the move.

Inconsequential passengers

fight for space,

worries and fears

compete for seats,

Each breath seems

to shout out

all aboard, all aboard,

come keep me awake,

the night and dark,

welcoming new thoughts.

Images flit and flee,

never staying within grasp,

encouraging a chase,

to understand, to see

what they might mean.

Only the dawning sun,

and beeping alarm,

see them on their way,

these night-time passengers

here, it seems, in the dark to stay.

 

 

© Searching for the Light

 

The antidote

Yesterday’s post was about sleep and the joys of it, well today I well and truly discovered the antidote to that powerful uplifting drug – a sleepless night. What makes it worse than ever is that once you have the sleep drug in your system and you are used to feeling good and being able to do more, waking up crabby and bleary eyed to face the world after snatching merely an hour’s pre-dawn shut-eye is devastating.

To sleep poorly night after night is one thing, you get used to foggy days, a clouded brain, not being able to put one foot in front of the other, forgetting things or simply being too tired to care. Having experienced a day of joyous freedom from the exhaustion that plagues me, today, I was plunged back into that world of half being. A day when I needed to be alert and appear intelligent. Addressing a room full of strangers, explaining a new idea and arguing my case was extremely hard when I all wanted to do was curl up on the floor and sleep. I am not sure how coherent I was or whether I did myself justice, but everyone seemed happy, nodding and making acquiescent noises and no one asked any awkward questions. If only that little session had been yesterday I would have blinded them with my brilliance!

Now my poor befuddled and addled brain is refusing to release the words I need and my weary body is crying out for slumber, so once again I will climb between the sheets and hope that I will get a fix, a small one will do I am not greedy. So I bid all of you read this adieu and wish you, as we say in Irish, codhladh samh.

 

The best drug in the world…

I woke this morning to the insistent beeping of my alarm clock. In the midst of a wonderful dream I tried to ignore the intrusive noise, snuggling further down under the duvet not quite realising what the noise was, somehow it was incorporated into my dream world and I tried desperately to pay no heed to it. After a few moments though I could bide it no longer and waking slightly it dawned on me that it was actually the alarm clock, I leant over to hit the snooze button to find that it had stopped all by itself, this is a neat little trick it has when it is not switched off after ten minutes. Bleary eyed, I looked at the clock to see that it was indeed ten minutes past my normal getting up time, and much as I wished to stay in bed I needed to get up then and there or everyone else in the house would be late.

This was a highly unusual event for me as in the last few weeks I have found it easy to fall asleep but wake after a couple of hours and find it difficult to drift off again. I have no idea why this should be, there is nothing in particular worrying me and life for the most part is good at the moment. However last night I retired at my normal time, read a few pages of my book and fell asleep and heard nothing until my alarm this morning. Pure bliss!

For those who have no problems sleeping a good night’s sleep probably means little but to an insomniac used to seeing the world through a fug of sleep deprivation it is a high like no other. Today I felt as if I was walking on air, was chirpy and happy and unfazed by large queues while out shopping. I was able to get through a whole more today than on a day when I have had little sleep. Sleep is in my view the best drug in the world… and I want more of it.

 

 

That elusive goal…

Yet another sleepless night, I sit here exhausted, barely able to think let alone type. Sometimes, I return to bed once the rest of the household have left for school or work and slumber contentedly for a couple of hours, but  this morning even that simple pleasure was denied me by a brain too fried to think straight yet I can not quieten it. I do not understand, there is nothing going on in my life at the moment that is causing me to worry, in fact for the most part things are good.

I fall asleep easily but wake an hour or two later with my thoughts going around in perpetual circles, inconsequential thoughts, but no matter what I do to try to stem the flow they just keep getting through. When I do eventually fall back asleep at some point in the early hours I am assailed with dreams or images or frantic journeys, either the failure to get organised or a mishap somewhere on the journey. These dreams for some odd reason always involve buses and frequently groups of people who would never in real life be in the same room let alone embarking on the same journey.

Neither yoga nor meditation are doing the trick at moment, there was a time when just mentioning the word meditation would have me fast asleep in seconds, but now I can not still my brain, I cannot block out the thoughts. This frightens me, as this was where it all started before, depression following a long bout of insomnia, granted there were other contributing factors, the collapse of my live’s dream being the main one.

I have seen my doctor and following a battery or quizzes and testing of approximately a litre of blood (o.k. not quite, but it felt like it at the time!), there is nothing particularly wrong with me and she reckons it is just that time of life. There is little the medical profession are willing to do for insomnia, they no longer hand out sleeping tablets like smarties as apparently it costs the powers that be far too much to wean the recipients off them again. So I am stuck with herbal remedies that do not work.

I do the tricks of no technology before bedtime, well most nights, no caffeine after lunch, I don’t generally drink alcohol, I have a regular routine, bed at the same time each night, up at the same time every morning. Apart from my early morning snoozes without which I would not get through the day, my sleep hygiene, as the experts call it, is good. So why does sleep, something that most of the universe takes for granted, elude me?

 

Fighting for independence

Why it is that I never sleep at the weekend I cannot fathom but following a hectic week and two sleepless nights    I am shattered. I seem once again to have spent the weekend cooking and sorting out squabbles amongst the children but spending little quality time with them as I am so frazzled I can barely think. I look forward to Mondays when they return to school and I can get to my first yoga session of the week. I know it should not be like this, that my children are young for so short a time and that I should be enjoying the precious time I have with them now, that I may regret in the future the things we didn’t do, games not played, outings we missed but being on my own with them for most of the weekend while my supposed other half pursues his own hobbies is incredibly difficult.

The older two are at an age when they want their independence, to hang out with their friends or chill and watch TV or DVDs, the younger one who annoys them intensely, in part because she has not yet joined their teenage world and because of her illness which has demanded so much extra attention this week. She too is fighting for her independence, to be allowed to travel to school and clubs by herself, which I have allowed to some extent, but then asthma strikes again and I find myself hauling on the reins, holding on tightly, afraid to let her out my sight for fear something should happen while she is away from me and other adults who know how to deal with an attack. And so with each of them fighting to prove their entitlements the squabbles start.

And I am torn in two, between wanting to hold them close, keeping them as children and wanting to just let them go and get on with their own lives because I am too tired to deal with them. On good days when I have had a reasonable amount of sleep we have fun, a laugh, a giggle, engaging in silly dances or making up rude words to well-known songs, helping with homework or talking through problems they may have.

But then the demon insomnia strikes and I am holding the black dog at bay and merely getting through the day is an uphill battle. I want to lock myself away and do nothing but know that I cannot, for no matter how independent they may seem they still need their mother. So with the tiredness and accompanying guilt I strive to do my best, to smile for them, to show them that I am here no matter what.

One day in the not too distant future they will have made it out into the world to stand on their own two feet and all I can do is hope and pray that I am doing a good enough job; that when they eventually find their independence I can look back and see that it has all been fine, that I have not damaged or hurt them but helped them on their way.

 

What I am there for!

Grumpily, I reach out and hit the snooze button on the alarm clock, hoping futilely to catch another few minutes sleep. Once again sleep has eluded me for much of the night, dreams and thoughts chasing through my brain, confused and muddled never sure which is which, unable to decide if I am fully awake or still asleep. Several times I turn over shivering for the change in weather has meant cooler nights, not yet cold enough to put on the winter bedding yet too cool for just lightweight bedding and so much of the night is spent huddling into the duvet in an effort to get warm or tossing aside the covers to cool down.

How can I greet the day with joy and gratitude when all I feel is the need to roll over and go back to sleep. I am supposed to leap cheerfully out of bed and lovingly make packed lunches, welcome my family with smiles and open arms, serve breakfast and see them off for the day, but in  reality I want to roar at them all to leave me alone, to get their own lunches and breakfasts, I want to stay in bed. But something in me tells me I must get up and do my duties. I have always had an iron will and a strong sense of self-discipline, so I grouchily I shove back the covers, grope my way from one room to another waking everyone. I am not gentle about this this morning as I realise it is already late. I try to stop the critical voice that tells me I should have made the effort to get up earlier, as now everyone is going to be late and it is my fault. I tell myself instead that I am doing the best I can, that everyone else in the house has alarm clocks, they are old enough to know what time they need to get up at, but they prefer me to wake them up, they do not like the intrusive nature of the alarm clock, and so if I am tardy then they must learn to put up with that and organise themselves better so that they are on time.

I ignore the complaints as I wake each one of them up, I already know it is late, I know I they needed to be up fifteen minutes ago. I tell them that is not really my problem, I have woken them up now, they know it is late it is now up to them to get themselves ready on time. For my part I will have the lunches ready to go, breakfast will ready, there is not much more I can do. As it happens all are organised and ready to leave on time, no one misses their bus or is late today.

So why do I feel so guilty about grabbing an extra ten minutes in bed after a relatively sleepless night? I don’t need the extra time, I had plenty of time to do all I needed to do to ensure everyone had everything required for their day, and yet I feel that I am letting them down because they had to rush this morning, they did not have time to eat in leisure nor watch the news, they had to forgo a cup of tea as that would have made them late. Is it my fault? Do I need to be responsible for the actions of others as well as my own? Should I, as my daughter told me in a tone used only by teenagers, be prepared to put my family and their needs before my own, because that in her words is what I am there for?

 

Letting go.

I wake in the middle of the night, some unfamiliar noise having disturbed me, unwilling to leave my warm bed I turn over hoping I will soon return to sleep. For insomnia is one of the scourges of depression, the accompanying lethargy made worse by physical exhaustion. And it is during those dark early morning hours before the rest of the world has woken that the darkness and negativity make firm their hold on you. Unable to stop the thoughts, restlessly tossing and turning, you wait for the sounds that herald a new day knowing full well that if you do not sleep you will not cope with what the day throws at you no matter how minor the problem.

Having always been a chronic insomniac I have tried many things in an attempt to gain a nights sleep, from ensuring regular hours, to not watching TV before bed, hot baths and milky drinks, hypnosis cds, all to no avail. About eighteen months ago I decided to take up yoga again, something I had enjoyed very much in my twenties. Though in my youth what attracted me to yoga was the physical challenge of the different postures, most of which I could do with impunity but some of which eluded even my youthful and flexible body. But over the last few months I have discovered the true value of yoga, not pushing yourself into impossible positions but being aware of what your body can do and learning to stay within its limits. This “mindfulness” that is so much a part of good yoga practice, something I had not understood before, and allows you to focus totally on what you are doing with different limbs and your breathing at any given time, there is no time for thinking  of other things. Through my yoga practice I have learned not only to relax my body but also to quieten the chatter in my mind, to focus on my breath, to allow thoughts to float by rather than engage with them and in doing so I have learnt to sleep better. The results were not immediate taking the best part of a year before I finally succumbed to my teacher’s pleas to just “let go” and I do on occasion still suffer the odd sleepless night when nothing will stem the endless round of thoughts and worries. But those I am thankful to say are fewer and farther between.