Sleep used to be more magical...

I slept most of the day today. I didn't need to. I woke up at 7 or 8 this morning and felt wide awake and like I could get out of bed and have energy. But I didn't want to, so I willed myself back to sleep. And managed to keep falling back asleep each time I woke up for the majority of the day. Now it is dark out, and I am finally awake. I don't really want to, but I don't think i can sustain sleep anymore, and I would definitely be awake all night if I tried. I may be awake all night anyways. Although, at this moment, i feel like I could manage a nap.

This is not healthy behavior, I'm pretty sure. And the frustrating thing to me is, I used to be able to sleep away feelings better. My problems would seem smaller, and the next week things would get better. Now, my feelings are very real and there and not going away. Being an adult is stupid. And I don't really feel better. I just feel alone and isolated. And things are not going resolve all easy on their own. The ex is still my ex (although the text saying he loved me and the brief kiss were not helping in solidifying that), work is still a mess, and my finances are still a mess. And no one is fixing those things for me. And none of these things seem smaller after sleep.

I know I have loving, supportive friends. Several of them have been checking with me on this and listening as much as I need. But I'm so lonely. Everyone has these busy lives. I need company. I'm alone in this stupid apartment, and I don't know how to ask anyone to interrupt their life to spend time with me.

Sleeeep

For the love. Just when I thought my sleep was almost kind of healthy (ie, I woke up in the morning at about the same time, and often earlier, which, while annoying, felt closer to healthy than previous sleep patterns), and I have a night of no sleep. I was awake until 4am this morning. I tried to fall asleep throughout the night and was just sooo wide awake that I gave up a few times and sat up and did a few things online to try to bring on the drowsiness through some activity. Nope. Didn't work. I finally started feeling like I could find sleep at about 4 and I was able to fall asleep finally. And then of course I slept through church completely. I loved my bed today. When I woke up today my bed was so, so comfortable, and I was so content. That is much better than waking up to anxiety like I was doing earlier this year. I didn't want to get out of bed but I had dinner at my parents. Before that I was enjoying a supremely lazy day in my jammies. Which sounds nice except for the immense guilt of missing church. Again. 

I hope that I can sleep tonight. I wish that I could just stay up all night and sleep in my bed all cozy tomorrow though. I don't want to go to work. I don't want to be reminded of the life I have that seems to be going nowhere, and that seems to be so much about how alone I am. 

Everyone's an Expert!

I had a reeeeally bad weekend last weekend. One of the worst weekends I've had in years. One of the worst weekends I've ever had. It was a stay-in-bed weekend. A weekend where you wish you had the flu instead because that would be more comfortable. Because my heart felt like it was tearing, and I was aching for connection, but unable to ask for it, let alone accept it when offered. I didn't go to church. I cancelled a dinner with my parents. I didn't admit to anyone how bad it was until the end of a very long day in bed on Saturday.

Everyone seemed to know what would fix it all. The fact that I was not at all persuadable speaks to how bad I was. I couldn't be talked into going to church the next day. I couldn't be talked into having dinner with my parents. My close friends knew that this is where I should be on Sunday. They knew I shouldn't be in bed. I knew I shouldn't be. I just didn't care. I didn't want to be around people. I was too low to hide how low I was, and I didn't want to show that to anyone but a few close trusted friends. Unfortunately that one on one time was not an option right away. Not to say that they didn't worry, and try to help me, and offer solutions. What I wish had happened, and what would have happened in a simple world or another life, is that someone would have dropped everything and come to me. Because what I really needed? A hug. Still haven't gotten that one. I suck at asking for hugs. Yes, where I was at was my choice. But I was at a place in my head where I had stopped caring. And interestingly enough, at least one friend seemed irritated with me for that choice, almost overshadowing her concern. Maybe that had to do with the belief that I was much too strong to be so easily hobbled. Maybe it was a belief that my predicament was an attempt to manipulate for attention. I don't know. I just know that between that and the response of a friend who was pushing me to see my counselor this week like she was about to put me on suicide watch, I felt kind of misunderstood. Yeah, apparently communication is not as strong a point for me as I thought it was. Great. More stuff to fix.

I love my bed.

It's 5:21 p.m., and I still have not gotten out of my bed. I am sitting up, which is progress. I've checked my email, looked at some job postings, and watched Dr. Phil and Oprah. I'm really going to have to make a run for the bathroom soon. Somehow I don't htink this is going to help me correct my sleeping schedule. I have tried staying up all night, taking a short nap in the afternoon, and then going to bed at a semi-reasonable hour twice now. But I can't quite bring myself to get up. My bed is warm and comfy, and sleep is stress-free, once I get there. Plus sometimes I have nice dreams that I actually remember when I sleep too long.

Is a Little Empathy Too Much to Ask For?

Today I am lamenting over friends who just don't understand. If you're clinically depressed, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the friends who think you are lazy, that you need to buck up. Those friends who, regardless of how many times you have explained the many symptoms of depression, think it's just about being sad.

Yes, there is sadness. There is also anger, anxiety, lack of concentration, too much sleep, too little sleep, too much hunger, too little hunger.... but it's not just sloth and gluttony. Yes, I still have my free will. But the problem is, when I wake up in the morning (or afternoon, or evening), I don't want to be conscious. It hurts. I'm not necessarily talking body aches and pains, although it seems like sometimes I do wake up with a headache or general physical ickiness that makes me want to retreat back into my dreams. I'm talking about an all-consuming sorrow. It's as if I've woken up to realize that my best friend has died. Fortunately this is not the case. But it's that magnitude of grief on the bad days, and I don't always know why. And yes, sometimes when I get up, and pass that threshold of pain upon first waking, I realize there is no real source of the sadness. Sometimes I do buck up, and feel better, and thank the heavens for the beautiful day. But sometimes I just wish, all day long, that I hadn't listened to the voice of reason that told me I should get up.

Sometimes anxiety consumes me, and I spend the whole day chasing my thoughts about a stressful situation around and around in my head. It's not the useful sort of thinking, where I contemplate solutions, and rational decisions are made. It's the kind of thinking that slowly deteriorates into totally irrational thoughts. At the beginning of the day, I might be thinking about how my best friend has not been online this month, and the fact that he sometimes marks himself as showing offline to get work done. By the end of the day, I've convinced myself that he has marked himself offline to avoid me, and that something I said at some point offended me. I've convinced myself that he doesn't really like me at all, and just puts up with me for his wife's sake. I've convinced myself that I should have seen this last year, and I start to see patterns in his behavior. And the hard thing is, because I seem to be less observant when I am my most depressed, I might have in reality have offended him and not noticed it. So I tell myself this is anxiety, and that I am being irrational, and I talk to this friend, and he assures me it is not personal. But I don't believe him. Because I've seen a pattern. And I have a tendency to expect the worst. Because why would anyone want to be friends with me? I bug the crap out of myself.

This is the week I've had. I have a close friend who refuses to help me wake up for church, which I keep sleeping through, and which is important to me. She seems to think that the fact that I sleep through it is an indicator that I am not as devoted to my faith as she is. She seems to think that I am choosing not to go to church because sleep is more important. In reality, my sleep schedule is so messed up I don't know where to start to fix it. I'm not working right now, so a bedtime is a little silly. There is nothing to wake up for the next day. Even when I try to correct my schedule, my thoughts race and my hearts race and my muscles ache. I cannot sleep when I want to. When I do manage to relax and go to sleep, I sleep for far too long, and I fight wakefulness, for the reasons described above. So when Sunday rolls around, it is doubly hard to rouse myself at the right time, and get myself to church. And when I do succeed in attending, all of the people annoy me, and all the happiness makes me want to wretch. In my rational mind, I see that they are, for the most part, not annoying. And that I am incredibly angry. And that no one understands, which makes me hate them more.

So, dear friend, I say to you here, where you will never read: educate yourself. If you have a depressed friend, it might be me. And I am telling you, your inability to show compassion makes me feel that much more freakish. Learn about the symptoms, maybe watch a movie or two, and try to put yourself in my shoes. I already am disgusted enough with myself. I don't need your judgement.

Yay for Meds!

This week I'm feeling the effects of my new medication. I'm productive at work, I have a sudden optimism that life won't suck forever, and I like people- at least some people. This is a step in the right direction.

Of course, the fact that I am blogging at almost four in the morning when I have to be up and ready to work at 10am is not a good sign. Bad girl. This is a new trend. I don't usually stay up past two. And I still love me some sleep, which makes the mornings especially difficult.