Insomnia

Insomnia

Insomnia has got to be one of my least favorite symptoms of the Bipolar/PTSD/Various Anxiety disorders filled world that I live in. I hate not being able to sleep, although I have had this problem since I was a child (I was the kid reading under the covers until the wee hours).

I know all the things one is supposed to do, but sometimes I just cannot sleep. I try not to take naps, I have a sleep/wake cycle; But, no, sleep gets irritable and refuses to drop by until the  alarm goes off., and by then it is too late. Another foggy day; and although coffee is the nectar of the sleepy, there isn’t enough caffeine to make up for missed sleep.

Apparently, two of the meds that keep the world safe from me cause sleep disturbance. What’s the point of having relatively benign mood swings if your sleep patterns change? Changes in my sleep/wake cycle have been known to cause minor psychoses; it doesn’t seem to matter if I am in a depressed downward spiral, or if I am manic and just do not need the sleep. The outcome is the same; the world looks at me as if I have polka dots, and I view the world and the people in it as threats. PTSD would like to thank the Academy. Oh, let’s not forget the vital role that ADD has in this lack of my dreamworld. Which leads me to the question: Why do you wake up just as the dream is getting interesting? That just doesn’t seem quite fair.

However, I digress. My father suffers from insomnia, and has as long as I have been here (so I would assume he had it before). I wonder if it is genetic like so many other mental issues. Yes, I consider insomnia a mental health issue. There are many people for whom sleep is necessary and vital to their well-being. I am not talking about the occasional sleepless night, but days of no sleep. If you are in a manic swing up, you start to believe that you can rule the world, you call people at wildly inappropriate times, and, for me, I clean. For a while, this great burst of energy is euphoric (like being on Ecstasy; don’t know never tried it). After a few days of this, you almost welcome the inevitable crash to the floor.

At least when I crash and burn from a manic episode, I can usually sleep for a few hours at a time. But, I am always up by 6am no matter how hard I try for just one more hour; the hour eludes me like the tail end of a slipstream that I am surfing. (I tend to liken mood swings to the ocean; it is either calm or it is not).

Right now, I am running on about 4 hours of very fitful sleep, and I have to ride my bike about 4 miles home. I do not like riding tired because your attention is not great and navigation is important when dealing with cars. The people in this city simply cannot drive: half are going at least 10 mph over the limit, another group is 10 mph below the speed limit, and the rest think it is the autobahn. That’s a lot of sensory input when you haven’t slept well. Meanwhile, my boyfriend is snoring away without a care in the world (at the moment; that comes upon waking). I, myself, woke up at 4:38 am after sleeping for maybe 4 non-contiguous hours. My eyes feel as they have been ground with sandpaper or maybe a Dremel tool.

Why don’t they warn you about the basics of your mental health cocktail? No one ever said that not sleeping was part of the deal. There should be flyers covering mental health conditions just the same as there are fliers about Diabetes, Heart Health, the dangers of smoking, etc. It would have been nice to know that my very own personal cluster-fuck (sorry) of diagnoses would include periodic bouts of NO SLEEP!! I feel like I am on speed and NyQuil all at the same time. I hate this particular facet of my meds and my little cluster-fuck of mental issues; here’s to sleeping before the psychosis sets in. I am already hearing things that aren’t there. That’s why I can’t sleep; sometimes the voices will just not shut up no matter how tired the mind and body are. I thought that was the purpose of anti-psychotics?

What Goes Up Must Come Down

I have been having a terrible time with sleeping recently which for someone who has Bipolar is a really bad thing. I get in bed after taking nighttime meds, I read a little, I get sleepy, I turn out the light, and Bam!, I am awake, but sleepy because of the meds. I cleaned up my room at 12:30 am having gone to bed at 10:00 pm, and sleeping for about 2 hours, and then there it goes, my eyes open, my brain starts up, and I end up doing really crazy sounding stuff like cleaning up my room at 12:30 am, and then watching TV for 3 hours, going back to bed, and sleeping a little then waking up at 5:00 am. That is around 4 hours. However, the problem is that it is not 4 hours straight. I have been cat-napping for about 2 weeks. 

I finally call my doctor in desperation at 8:00 am yesterday explaining to the tech that answered the phone that I needed to speak to his nurse, that I have bipolar disorder, I am not sleeping more than an hour or two at a time, that my diagnosis also included the potential for psychosis. and that I was starting to hear and see things I knew were not real (major check for psychosis; if you know it isn’t real then you are not psychotic, yet). In other words, I tried to make it very clear that I was dissembling rapidly. I called two more times. Nothing. At approximately 5 in the evening, I talked to another tech, by this time fairly freaked out, and she assured me that a nurse would call me straightaway. Nope. By 6 pm, I was sobbing uncontrollably (lack of emotional control due to lack of sleep), and seeing and hearing things.

I was having this ethical argument with myself about whether it was wrong to go to the ER and take up a bed that someone else who was very ill or injured could use just because I couldn’t sleep and was becoming psychotic, or should I just stay home and hope that that which is up will always come down. You know its bad when you are having moral arguments with yourself, and both teams are deadlocked. So I called a nurse hotline in an attempt to clear up this moral dilemma. I figured maybe a third, impartial party could solve the issue. Nope. That’s just the way my life flows (or doesn’t). She said I should go because of the hallucinations, but since I knew they were not real, I was not psychotic, yet, therefore, I could probably stay home and try to get some sleep, and try the doctor again in the morning. Which I ultimately did do, and I slept. I did not sleep straight through, I did wake up a handful of times, but by now I am so tired that I have no choice but to sleep.

I am still tired, but I am awake for the day, and there is no going back down which I don’t think I ever did. I think my body in collusion with my brain said “Enough is enough. We are sleeping now….” so off to sleep I went. I am still hearing things and seeing things in my peripheral vision that I know are not there. That is a good thing. It means I am not psychotic, yet. I am pretty pissed off at my doctor’s office though. A bipolar on the verge of psychosis is not funny, it is a very real crisis. But, you are not suicidal and you are not homicidal, so it must not be that bad. Ahem (clearing throat)…….when its you that cannot sleep, and are hearing and seeing things….its bad. Fucking “normal” people.

Insert Title Here

Title having been decided upon, I have decided that I need a break from myself. But, everywhere I go, there I am. It’s like I am stalking myself. Maybe it is because I am going through another phase where my sleep patterns have gone all wonky. I still need a spa week, though. That would be lovely. And, yes, I realize that this does not sound like the ramblings of a manic depressive, but it is the voice in my brain that says write it down, you’ll feel better. So, it must be from a manic-depressive who is more manic than depressive. Hmmpphhh……maybe I’ll try sleeping again. That should be an exercise in futility.

Bouncing Brain ~ The World Looks Different Through The Lens Of Insomnia

A Love Hate Masquerade (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am tired of so many things……something has got to give and it better not be me. I just wish the world would wake up one morning and realize that while we all may hold different beliefs, lead different lifestyles, eat different food, pray to different divine beings/powers, we are all the same at the core. We all desire to be loved and happy and have friends and a sense of belonging somewhere. We all love our families and our children, and would do anything to keep them out of harm’s way. But, no, people have to be petty and put a stop to any disagreement within their ranks, sometimes with deadly, militaristic force. That’s not going to solve anything in the long run except to determine who had the better weapons and who had the better allies. I find it all frighteningly petty.

There is so much more that people could be doing than having to fight their own governments while their governments hang onto their power by using chemical agents on their own people. Even we have done it. Look at the guys who came back from Desert Storm and started showing up at clinics with mysterious ailments. There are times when I get so discouraged that anything will change because that’s just the “way it has been.” Well, why can it not be “that’s the way it was?” I think I need sleep tonight. My brain is starting to bounce, and I am starting to think aloud and on “paper,” so to speak.

I would love to set up a world-wide contest of sorts to see who could create a country with a government that not only worked, but worked for its citizens, and where diversity was completely embraced as being part of life because no matter how much you stomp your feet and scream and cry, people are going to be different than one another. Accept it, embrace it, get over it.

I am just so extraordinarily pissed off today. About everything. I just do not understand why people hurt the people they purport to love like the air they breathe. I do not understand why people form exclusive little groups and if you don’t belong, then you might as well cease to live. That is what bullying is all about. And, on the subject of bullying, does it seem more prevalent today than when you were in school (provided you have graduated college by now)? I mean, the kids can’t even escape it at home. In my day, you were bullied at school and maybe a little bit by crank phone calls. Now, these kids have iPads, smartphones, they are on the Internet for as many hours as we used to watch cartoons. They can’t escape it. It is insidious and everywhere. Why are 12 year olds committing suicide? What can be so bad in a 12 year long life that rather than struggle through it, they choose to take their lives? I wonder, because I was that kid. You know, the one that was slightly off, but you couldn’t put a finger on it. I was harassed from grade school until I left high school, and yes, I did try several times to take my life. But, I couldn’t do it. Something has kept me alive for many years for some reason that I have not figured out yet. I should be dead. I should not be sitting here letting my mind dance over the million thoughts I have in one minute of an average person’s life. I hate having Bipolar and I hate having ADD, and I hate being anxious so much of the time and I really hate the paranoia that comes with all of them, especially the bipolar and the PTSD which I hate also primarily because of the way I came to develop it. I just really do not like much of anything today. I fell off the sine wave.

I Have No Idea What I Am Right Now ~ Manic, Depressed, Stressed Or Are They All The Same

bipolar-quotes-02-300×240 (Photo credit: Life Mental Health)

 

I have one certainty right now. I have BPAD type I with psychotic features, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder with and without Agoraphobia, and Panic Disorder. It it not amusing that 3 of 4 are anxiety disorders that are triggered by stress which I am undergoing to an extreme that I never have in the past. Not this kind of stress. I can handle work-related stress, the everyday stress that comes from sharing this planet with so many different people, but I don’t know if I can handle this level of emotional stress. I feel that I may go insane (I have a list to choose from), and this time I may not come back in the same form I left in. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, I am paralyzed in my mind where I go to hide. I feel like a coin being tossed and whatever comes up heads is where I go that day. If it’s tails, do not bother getting out of bed, it won’t be worth the time, energy or pain that will go into trying to stay positive in the face of extremely negative circumstances. 

 

Everyone thinks I am strong and I am not. I am a quivering mass that is hiding behind a facade of normalcy and strength. Unless you have experienced this type of emotional stress, you will not understand what I am going on about. My husband is going to be served with divorce papers tomorrow, and neither one of us have a place to go live other than where we are. So, we are living together for the next three months. I do not think this is going to finally be the proverbial straw, and I go off the deep end (I am already in the deep end), and never come back. This is going to color my world for a long time, I think. My whole paradigm about relationships has shifted, and it remains to be seen in which direction. My last long term relationship lasted 9 years, but at the time no one knew that I had manic-depression. PTSD, yes. But nothing that could explain the Bipolar symptoms that were beginning to manifest. Now, I know, and I feel an obligation to whoever can love me to tell them so they will know from the get go what they are in for. Ideally, this person will not be swayed and will learn how to be with someone who has periods of mania and severe depression. And, they will care and not care at the same time. They will love me for me, and the disorder won’t always be the elephant in the room like it is now.

 

He doesn’t understand what he did wrong in the marriage, I totally get what I did wrong. I am divorcing him for those reasons, not because I do not love him, but because I do love him and care about his welfare, and I am not an easy person to be around sometimes. I do things and say things that are harmful and damaging. And, I am trying to protect him from me, and to a certain extent, myself from him. I cannot tolerate his pet diversion any longer and still respect myself as a woman. I can no longer live with someone who refuses to try to learn something about Bipolar disorder since that has been the most disruptive of all my diagnoses. How can one handle something that one has no real knowledge of? I have to live with it everyday. You can be damn sure I read whatever I can get that is legitimate and not “pop” psychology. I cannot do battle against something that I do not understand. No one can. At least not effectively. I hope I can get through this without becoming cynical and jaded. I hope that I can get through this without any drama, or me going way off the radar of “normal” feeling. 

 

I just hope that……hell, I do not know what I hope. I do not even know how I feel. I do not even know if I am feeling or if I am pretending which I am so good at. I just know something is off about me these days. I do not think I have allowed myself to feel because then I would be useless. Maybe I will let myself feel when I have time. Maybe.

 

I Just Don't Understand……Maybe I Really Am As Dumb As I Feel Sometimes

You Don’t Understand Me (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I do not get some people. It isn’t for lack of trying. Every person I have spoken to today has either been very snide or has outright yelled at me. Which tends to make me really irritable. I am already having a “manic episode” which means that I am not sleeping, eating, or anything else I supposed to do to keep myself healthy. What I do not get is why other people cannot seem to see when I am “sick” (I hate that term), and that is when they choose to get strange on me. 

 

I have no one to talk to about what is happening to me because nobody wants to hear it; they’ve got their own, much more important problems to deal with. I am being sued by my student loan provider, I am on the verge of being sued by my other student loan provider, if they win the payment amount per month that they want, I will be homeless because I simply can’t make nearly $300.00 in loan payments and pay rent. I figured it out. If I pay as the plans stand, I will have $662 (roughly) to pay rent, utilities, and try to feed myself. That’s impossible. I will be homeless. I will lose everything I have worked so hard to accomplish both socially and privately. Material possessions can be replaced eventually, but once you have been knocked down, it is really hard to stand back up.

 

I am going through a divorce and trying to live out the lease with my soon to be ex-husband. I can’t talk to him about how I feel about that. Most of the times, I feel okay about it. Neither of us were happy. But, then there are days like today where I really need someone to just listen to me. I feel very sad and lonely (as per the usual) today. I didn’t want to file for divorce, but it was the only thing that would resolve the entire situation between us. We fought all the time, made snide remarks about each other, he always defined me by my mental “interestingness”, but never by who I really am which is a normal person who feels life more intensely than most. I wrote him a note today trying to explain to him that I was not doing this out of malice, or that I can no longer tolerate him, but rather it was out of love for him and concern for his welfare that I was stepping out of the picture before I do any more damage, Apparently, it is very difficult to have a relationship with a bipolar person. I say it is very hard for a bipolar person to have a relationship with a chronically depressed person.

 

I basically have no friends anymore because he isolated me from them through very subtle emotional and verbal abuse. But, I am just as much to blame on that front. Sometimes, I think we fought about nothing just so we could hurt each other. It was really good for about the first year and a half, and then very slowly, it started to go downhill. Then it picked up momentum, and became it’s own living entity. But, how do you fight something you cannot see? How do you fix something when the other person is blaming you for nearly everything that has gone wrong, but they cannot see their own contribution to the demise of something that was once beautiful? 

 

I am feeling very uncomfortable today. I cannot seem to say anything right to anyone I have encountered today. I have been flat out yelled at by another mentally “interesting” friend who is really struggling right now. Nothing I said was right, she shot down everything I suggested as “impossible,” she put down any idea I had that might have helped. I even offered to help her clean and organize her apartment, But, that was met with more yelling. I tried to tell her that people are willing to help her, but that she pushes them away by repeatedly turning down their offers to help her. Eventually, people will get tired of getting shot down every time they try to help her, and they will stop offering. Why beat a dead horse?

 

I feel very alone in this. I know that I will be okay in the long run, but the short run is a bitch. I feel like the wicked witch of the west. I feel like he was right all along; that the destruction of this relationship was mostly me. I changed him, I damaged him, I hurt him, I didn’t show enough affection, I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that. He never stops to think that he did two very important things: he spent hours on the Internet watching and collecting amateur porn which I felt very disrespected by, and he didn’t open a single book written by the people who are the experts on mood disorders to find out how to support me, or even to just understand me. To me, that shows a lack of real caring. It tells me that his love was conditional on my not getting upset about his porn addiction, and just let him carry on his merry little way thinking that he understands the multitude of bipolar manifestations.

 

I cannot talk to anyone about this. Everyone I know is happily married. When you are getting divorced, the last thing you want to do is talk to someone with a functional marriage. It just makes everything that iota worse than it already is. I find myself questioning whether I have made the right decision, or if I really am as dumb as I feel. 

 

Tomorrow Is D-Day

Panic-attack (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, tomorrow is “the” day. I am absolutely resolved to end this farce of a relationship and reclaim my happiness. I firmly believe that I was in a better place mentally before this relationship than I am now. Although, that may be a perception colored by sadness and anger at the demise of a marriage that was supposed to last for life. I have no idea. All I know is that I cannot sleep well, am not eating, am ignoring my appearance, and all the other hallmarks of severe anxiety. I know that this is the right thing to do, and probably has been for quite some time, but actually initiating a separation from someone you once were madly in love with is extremely scary. It means I will be alone with myself again. Just me and my cat. Although, if i am honest about it, I have been alone with my cat for a long time now. But, there was still someone to talk to. When you have nobody to talk to except your cat, then life gets a little weird. Cats are great little furry healers, though. Having a dog or a cat or whatever kind of pet you prefer gives you something to nurture that in turn helps you to remain okay. I digress because I am really freaking out. 

I do not understand why this particular separation has me so anxious. It’s not like I have not gone through this before with previous relationships, one of which lasted about 9 years. When that one ended, I did feel like I was going through a divorce due to the length of the relationship. However, I had somewhere to focus my attention during that breakup. I was finishing college and working full-time so I had little time to sit and ruminate on the loss of my significant other. This time around though feels like a failure. I feel like I failed somehow. Like I didn’t do something right, and that, perhaps, everything I did do was in some way wrong or not enough. I didn’t feel that way with my other breakups of relationships. The toughest was the nine-year one. The saddest was one that lasted almost as long as this marriage did. It was only about three and one half years, but I felt a tremendous amount of loss and grief over that one.

I am not good at dating. I am in my early 40’s, and I am pretty well set in my ways at this point. I know what I want, what I like, and what I don’t want and what I do not like. That’s going to make dating difficult. That and I am feeling like somehow being mentally “interesting” is going to be an encumbrance to my meeting someone new. It’s not like I can get away with not being straightforward about the fact that I have manic depression, PTSD, occasional bouts of Agoraphobia, and Panic attacks. They are going to rear their ugly heads at some point just as they always do, and then, people either freak out and want to get away from me, or they try their best to understand but inevitably just cannot handle it, or they are supportive and try to learn what they can about the various challenges I face daily. It’s always one of the three. I think the one that hurts most is the person who tries to understand but ultimately just cannot handle the sometimes intense emotions that I feel. Then they leave. Either be supportive and educate yourself and stick around or freak out right away and be gone. That’s how I prefer it. Two options, no grey area. 

I do not mind living alone. In fact, I may prefer it, but you cannot be alone all the time. A person will go nuts, literally, without other people. That’s another thing. I have to find a place to live that I can afford on my little SSDI check, and find a part time job to supplement my income. People take a look at my resume, and the first thing they ask is why I haven’t worked in 6 years. That’s a tough one to explain. It takes delicacy and a lot of inferences and innuendo to having been ill, but being better now. Then, they ask why I only worked two years in previous positions. Hmmmm, because I had uncontrollable mood swings and severe reactions to stress that were sometimes debilitating and I simply could not work for several days? This is where the Agoraphobia and Panic attacks live. i would try to get out the door, even going so far as to get ready to go, and at the last minute realize that the world was too scary that day, and I would call in sick. I was sick, in a matter of speaking, but not in a way that anyone would really understand unless they had had a similar experience. So, that should be fun. Not. I really want to try to finish my Paralegal degree because I think I would make a good one. I love research, I enjoy the legal profession, and I like to be support staff. However, that involves getting funding and getting to school. 

I know I shouldn’t feel like a failure, but you reach 42 and your only accomplishment of note is that you finished undergraduate school, you kind of feel like you just didn’t meet your “potential.” There are so many highly functioning Manic Depressives, i just wonder if I am one of them. I do not feel mentally impaired in any way, I do not feel that I am not smart enough, I guess I feel like somehow I have deserved everything that life has thrown at me, and I have either caught the ball and ran with it, or I didn’t. For me, there seems to be no grey area. I am either manic (like I suspect I am now) or I am depressed, but I seem to reside mostly in the middle with mixed episodes: manic and depressed. I know that I am not depressed because the crushing weight that is depression is not sitting on my chest. Probably slightly manic: not eating, not sleeping, thoughts racing, restless and irritable. 

I am very scared and sad and glad at the same time. I cannot live with someone who simply refuses to educate themselves about my “disorders,” I do not like that term. It is debilitating, and requires that you accept yourself as less than. But it sure is hard not to feel less than when you are ackowledging that you have lost. I intellectually understand that this divorce is not all my fault, that there is a role that my husband played, but I am experiencing the familiar heart-mind split. If i keep it intellectual, I am less sad, more pragmatic, and more realistic about this. If I let my heart into this, i will be a slobbery mess. 

Okay, feeling calmer and more certain than ever that this is the right choice for my health both physical and mental. It has disintegrated to a point where verbal and emotional abuse is common. I grew up that way. I do not have to live like that as an adult. As an adult, I have a choice. Exercising that choice is a whole different world. I warned him that it would come to this, and all he said was don’t threaten me. It wasn’t a threat, it was a certainty. It just got accelerated, that’s all. Okay, I think the anxiety has passed. Maybe I’ll go throw some makeup at my face so I do not look so plain 🙂

 

Struggling Back

 

Yoda (Photo credit: davidyuweb)

 

As I fight my way back from what was becoming a paralyzing mixed episode while house hunting, packing and moving (in the process I had my old sick cat put down and gave another away to the Animal Shelter which means almost certain doom), I find that being on the very edge is definitely not a place I ever want to be again. By all rights, I should have been in the hospital. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t really eat (whenever I tried my throat would not let me swallow), I was suicidal, however I had no time to be any of those things that so commonly land a Bipolar in the hospital. I was fighting tooth and nail to remain sane, or at least, a semblance of sane. Because I wasn’t really. I had gone mad, the meds were not working, nothing was working. I was getting mentally and physically exhausted. I have not had the time to mourn my pets who were probably my closest “friends.” I have a husband who has no sympathy or understanding for what I did. My ex fiance and a long time friend of mine had more sympathy and understanding of the pain. That isn’t right, and does make me question whether my husband has some form of attachment disorder or something. I have never met anyone who does not have sympathy for a person who has lost a pet. Any way, to close on a more positive note, I found this quote this morning in one of my too many books:

 

“Try not. Do or do not, there is no try” ~ Yoda, from The Empire Strikes Back 

 

Stress Induced Insomnia

 

I am experiencing probably one of the most debilitating aspects of Bipolar (at least to me): stress induced insomnia. One of the things the “professionals” will tell you about the disorder is to maintain a regular sleep-wake cycle. I am doing fine with the go to sleep part of the cycle. It is staying there that I am having issues with. All this accomplishes is to make you tired and cranky and depressed (or manic depending on how you swing). I think insomnia rivals the “mixed episode” as my least favorite thing about this disorder. I love to sleep. Sleep is the little respite you get from this disorder and the stress and anxiety that generally accompany it. For about 8 hours, you do not have a mood disorder, all is right with the world, and you are blissfully ignorant. But once that is broken, you are no longer surfing the sine wave; the troughs become deeper and the swells become higher. Your frequency is off. You start getting tired, and want to sleep, but you cannot, and that is so frustrating. It begins to build on itself. The more you want to sleep, the less able you are to actually get a solid 8 hours (or whatever works for you) of sound sleep. The longer this goes on, the more you stand a chance of relapse.

There are a few simple things about this disorder that will keep you from relapsing: take your meds the way you are supposed to, maintain a regular sleep pattern, and see your doctors.  It is pretty simple, really. But, if one thing is off, especially sleep, you will begin to feel weird. You can’t handle everyday problems, you become unfocused and you aren’t productive because in your mind, all you want to do is be able to sleep. And the longer this goes on, the less able you are to function. Even my mother says I get weird when my sleep cycles are off. At this point, i do not care if I am weird. i just want this stress to go away so I can sleep a full 8 or 9 hours. I do not like it when the sine wave is off. I do not like feeling as though my gently rocking boat has hit tempestuous waters. I much prefer the gentle rocking of my boat on the swells of a calm sea.