you and me and the devil makes three

I always try to assign supernatural explanations to my Bad Nights. Thankfully, they occur with less frequency than they used to (possibly because I eat somewhat normally now and no longer abuse drugs {that aren't prescribed to me} and am also miraculously no longer suicidal). But every once in a while, I still get a Bad Night.

Bad Nights mean I cannot sleep, even with sleeping pills. My usual dose is 200 mg of diphenhydramine. If that doesn't work, I'll add up to 150 mg of doxylamine, and/or a shot of Everclear in my fizzy water and orange juice. I try to get by on just the diphenhydramine, but I kind of need sleep so I do need to add alcohol or more sleeping pills about 4 out of 7 days a week.

Sometimes, though, I still can't sleep. I toss and turn and toss and turn and flail and rearrange the bed and go to the loo and toss and turn some more and go have a cigarette and flail around the bed and rearrange the sheets again and go to the loo and go walk around the house and toss and turn and then when 5 AM rolls around and the mockingbird starts up his R2D2 routine I usually just say feck it and call it a night, and go read until I have to actually get up for work. Those are the regular Bad Nights.

Because I do not drink enough water during the day (I've tried, I can't, leave me alone), I tend to get a powerful thirst at night and guzzle like a gallon of water before I go to bed. For this reason, I get up to go to the bathroom like 3 - 6 times a night. I always wake up around 4.00 AM and for whatever reason, it is that particular trip to the loo that sometimes ends in the other kind of Bad Night.

It happened this morning. I went back to bed, and I could not go back to sleep.

I blame the weather for some of this. Hell cannot be much hotter than New Jersey has been the last few weeks.

 

there isn't much else to do but sit here and puddle

 Like seriously, it's been in the 90s F (~30-35 C) and so humid you feel like you're swimming instead of walking. I HATE THIS WEATHER WITH EVERY FIBRE OF MY BEING, and of course my room is the hottest room in the house so even sleeping nude with no sheets or blankets and three fans pointing right at me, it's still too bloody hot.

So I went back to bed at 4.00 this morning and ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT go back to sleep. I can't take sleeping pills or alcohol at 4.00 AM because I need to get up for work at 7.30. All I can do is will my brain to please shut down for a few more hours.

Usually it doesn't. At least, not right away.

Then an hour and a half later, my brain decides it's time to try and drive Mich to total insanity.

I know it's coming, too, which makes it ten times worse. A feeling of Epic Tired comes on suddenly, and then the heart palpitations start. It's the weirdest feeling ever, like my heart sort of flutters for a sec, stops for what feels like a little too long, and then races for a couple seconds and then pretends to go back to normal before starting the whole flutter-stop-racing cycle over again. But by the time I'm like oh f*ck not again, I'm so tired I physically cannot stay awake.

Then the nightmares begin.

Always the same nightmare (or various versions of it)--they take place in my bedroom and I think I'm awake, something horrible and terrifying is happening (axe murderers, demons, random weird things that wouldn't be scary in real life but are scary now because it's a nightmare), and I am completely paralyzed.

I wake myself up when my attempts at moving my dream-paralyzed body end in me flailing like a lunatic and falling out of bed. (I usually try to scream or cry out in these dreams as well, but there have only been two accounts of me waking up actually screaming.)

After the first nightmare, it's a constant repeat of the same exact try to stay awake-->nightmare-->flailing-->wakeup-->do it again until I have to get up for work. At which point I am so exhausted and emotionally shaken that I have trouble functioning the whole day.

My doctor wants me to go to some fancy sleep clinic where they will attempt to INDUCE THIS ON PURPOSE so I can be studied. I was like ummmm no thanks.

(Plus my insurance won't cover that.)

So I always presume this is the result of a demon actually trying to possess me, or a poltergeist, or something. I hang dream catchers. I spread blends of herbs and junk for psychic protection. I obsessively clean in and around the bed in search of something that might be causing negative energy.

As if I'll actually find the source of these night terrors.

Does anyone else get these?? Someone please tell me I'm not alone.

.....in other news (and as a follow up to the post before the last one) I think I have finally shaken off the epic depression. I have gotten my finances in order and once I come back from CO in mid-August, I plan to move out of my house into my own apartment. (There was a rather large fight with Mumsy over something retarded, which was the final straw as far as me continuing to live with her.) For the first time in over a year, I go to bed at night NOT praying to die in my sleep. It is an amazing feeling.