The Sweet Spot

There is a sweet spot for going to bed and getting up.  If I miss those windows, I will struggle to sleep and no matter how many hours I sleep, won't feel rested.  I missed the window tonight.  I know better and I'm trying to not beat myself up over it.  There were things that I needed to finish tonight because otherwise they wouldn't get done.

I'm now in that place of wanting to stay up, to play, to have the day that I didn't have earlier where there was time for continuing to explore Found Poetry pieces and reading the three books that I've got going right now.  I want to do and be and create yet what my body and mind need more than anything right now is to rest and sleep.  I'm not sure why this happens.  Maybe it goes back to being  in college and getting that second wind. I'm really not sure what it is.  But something happens after 10 o'clock and no matter how tired I am, I can't make myself go to bed.  I'm a little kid staying up way past her bedtime, insisting that no she isn't tired yet in between huge yawns.  It would be cute if I was 3.  It's not so cute at 30.

It feels humiliating to have to ask my husband to make me go to bed as if I'm the child and he's the parent.  I probably need to explore why this happens.  Sleep and I don't often get along even when I do make it to bed in time.  It's always a crap shoot.  I know that going to sleep doesn't feel very safe.  That if I go to sleep I can't protect myself.  About half of the sexual trauma did occur at night, specifically around going to bed so that's a piece of it.

There's this frantic what-if-I-miss-something feeling that goes with it all too.  Again the roots of that are in trauma and not being allowed to forget anything or miss anything.  "I forgot", "I didn't know", or "I didn't hear you" were perilous phrases.

There's something else though.  Something before where my memories kick in. Something, someone young and terrified of beds and sleeping and being too warm because that's when you can't breathe.  I could guess what caused that but it would only be a guess that I could never confirm or disprove.

All of this to say, sleep and me aren't very good friends - except for the times that we are.  I can sleep during the day, and if I'm not careful will sleep all day and be up all night.  That's a recipe to fuel a major depressive episode.  I'm talking myself in circles here, trying to find the magic button that will let me go to sleep.  I feel like I'm rambling, aimlessly wandering and there is utterly no purpose to pushing publish on this.  It seems whiny and self-indulgent really.  Pointless to put out there in public except...it's me being vulnerable.  I hate talking about how normal day to day functioning is messed up because of PTSD, DID, vertigo, or because I'm recovering from several addictions.  I hate living a life where I can't take eating, sleeping, showering as things that I can do.  Each of those basic things requires elaborate planning and forethought for them to even happen.

All of it makes me look at God and go, "I survived for this?"  I'm tired and cranky and nothing good happens in my brain after 11 o'clock.  Time to get help to make myself go to bed.  I know things will look better in the morning.