You guys? This insomnia is so massive that I'm almost impressed. I feel like this is just another example of how my chronic illnesses are combining in a manner created to drive me over the edge. It's like they all fit together just so - not interlocking and meshing like a nice puzzle, but all jagged edges and hard corners and raw spaces that rub up against one another till they bruise and bleed.
This one requires that I exercise; that one makes exercising without passing out a near impossibility.
This one says carefully plan meals & eat healthy; that one says have no energy for cooking, no brain for the math required, and a nausea so lasting you might as well be living on board a rolling ship.
This one says wow, you're super-emotional and could really use a hug; that one says a hug will cause you more pain than ripping off your own fingernails.
This one says be super exhausted for every minute of every day forever; that one says, and also don't even think about sleeping.
They just all mesh so nicely together, don't they?
What with all of the insomnia, especially since I had been making small, tiny, minute improvements in my sleep over the course of the past few months, and a pain flare up that came out of nowhere (hello, ridiculous barometer: I'm wondering if you are not a main culprit here), I am beginning to feel like I can not handle things. Easy things like getting out of bed and washing off an apple to eat it (instead I find myself sitting in the kitchen staring aimlessly into space and wondering what the hell I went out there for), harder things (go ahead and ask me when I last showered: I dare you), and impossible things (lunch tomorrow with Grandmother and some cousins I haven't seen in three years? Never going to happen!) - they're all just sort of accumulating in a little pile over here, that I'm labeling "Hell no, but thanks for asking!"
It's hard to explain what the combination of CFS & Insomnia is really like - one of those 'you have to be there' kind of things, I guess. Because everybody can't sleep sometimes - a sleepless night now and then is just a part of life - and so people think they get it. But they don't. It's like being underwater, like drowning, almost. You know you need to push up towards the surface and get air, take a breath - get more than 5 minutes of sleep at a time - but you don't have the energy too push off in the right direction and your arms and legs won't work together for some reason, and your brain says helpful things like "now is a good time to panic, only do it as slowly as possible, if you please", and you wind up just floating away again, hoping the air - the SLEEP - will come and get you on its own. Parents of newborn babies come the closest to understanding it, I think - the sheer levels of exhaustion you can reach, which you didn't even know existed until right this moment. At least, that's what they tell me.
The other day, after about 37.5 hours with no sleep, and with my FM pain level reaching "i will claw my face off now" proportions, & having tried every 'sleepytime' trick in my repertoire, I was just laying on my bed, curled up as best I could, waiting. And every minute that ticked by made me more angry, made me feel totally out of control, made me want to track down every single doctor who'd told me to 'set a sleep clock' or 'try sleeping with the windows open' or how exercise would make my pain go away and stab them somewhere vital. Not that I would, but it seemed like a good idea, just so that I could say something equally meaningless like "try not to get stabbed, because then it won't hurt so much." It's just ridiculous, the things you hear when doctors have no freaking clue what your disease is/means/feels like.
Anyways, to avoid a similar fate tonight, and because I hope some people are still reading here, even if only occasionally, here I am at 3 am typing away, hoping that my words make sense (and being eternally grateful for spell check, because holy jebus, if you could see some of these errors). I'm trying not to be angry that the rest of you are sleeping peacefully in your beds, but not angry is about all I can manage: don't be jealous is definitely asking too much of myself. But being green eyed is understandable, I think, given the circumstances. Next, I'm going to go attempt to bake cookies, because if there's anything an exhausted insomniac should do at 3 in the morning, it's play with fire, while attempting to make an edible food-type product, completely unsupervised.
Well, when I put it that way, it doesn't sound like the wisest decision I could make, so maybe I'll just open another book instead. Or order something off of the internet. Those sound like good options, right? Aw, what do you care? You're probably snoring away anyways, you lucky bastards. Well, I promise not to hate you too much, if you'll come back soon.
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