Well, as I sit here becoming a bit eyelid-heavy just before 10:30pm, I'm left confusedly yet happily grateful. Considering the nature of my last post detailing the misery - OH THE MISERY - of my perpetual (years, years, years) insomnia which had recently reached chipmunk-on-speed levels of debilitating alertness, I'm left only able to guess at what has happened to suddenly give me the gift of feeling a little bit more human again for over a solid week so far. And now, I'm not only getting to bed at a reasonable hour, I've also been getting up naturally early, which IS BEYOND BIZARRE for a girl for whom hitting the snooze button for an hour at a time or being completely oblivious to a herd of elephants is nothing short of typical.
Here's how this all came to be...I think:
I retreated into an information semi-blackout for just over two weeks from before Thanksgiving until last weekend. This, I believe, helped by eliminating a lot of anxiety-ridden pressure I usually numbingly obsess over. I didn't worry about writing, photo editing, replying to emails, keeping up with news or any of the things that make me feel guilty when I know the pile of responsibility has barely shrunk.
I also had just come off a very unhealthy snippet of not sleeping for about 72 hours straight, which I can confidently say is not a lot of fun unless you enjoy thinking you see shadowy figures sitting next to you out of the corner of your eye who disappear when you face them directly.
Just after this, I spent about 2 or 3 days napping during very odd hours, and I continued my hermit-like aversion to the outside world. All I knew was that I was EXHAUSTED and for once I was choosing to listen ONLY to my body and ignoring my pesky, trouble-making mind.
And then, I woke up one of those days, stayed awake for a reasonable amount of time, and wonder of wonders I found myself actually yearning for my pillow instead of feeling the typical agitation I have battled for years when it comes to dragging myself into the bedroom for hours of sleepless torture. I didn't feel that familiar urgency to stay awake and...WHAT, exactly? There has never been a logical reason for me to stay up beyond the bounds of sanity. I would rarely get anything of value done in those hours anyway, yet I felt the anxiety of needing to do something...that I was trying to catch up on something I'd failed to accomplish during the day. Or maybe I was MISSING OUT on something, some feeling of satisfaction or peace. I certainly wasn't missing anything good on television. Trust me, after 2am you just hate yourself more and more as the Roseanne episodes pile up.
I'm not really sure how long this will last, but I'm doing all I can to not fall into the old trappings of restlessness. I am hyper-vigilant to take notice of my first inclination to be sleepy and LET my mind rest.
Mr. Sarcomical's theory?
"Maybe it's like when Superman had to circle the earth really fast to make time move...maybe you finally stayed up long enough that you circled back around your body clock."
Yeah. Maybe.
