Sleep is Complicated

I never thought it would be, but it is. As I laid down for my Sunday afternoon nap today, I found myself longing for the days when I was an eight-year-old who was sent to bed at 8:00 (while the sun was still up), only to be woken up in the morning by my mom, blissfully unaware of how many hours I had slept, not worrying about whether the number was too many or two few.


Now, not a night (nor a day) goes by without me falling asleep doing mental arithmetic, or waking up doing the same. Why am I so obsessed with the number of hours I sleep? I think the reason dates somewhere back to the time when I finally realized that I do not have normal sleeping habits--like everyone else I know. I was the girl who could go to bed at 8:00 and sleep until 12:00 with no problem. This is why my mother had to wake me up, or why, as I grew up, I was forced to learn how to use an alarm clock. Why do I have this extremely well-developed ability to sleep (perhaps overly so)? Some of it, I am sure, is related to the fact that people with cerebral palsy use three to five times the amount of energy that able-bodied people use when we walk and move around.


Lovely, thanks. So, my muscles don't work the way they're supposed to--ever--and when they do move, I expend massive amounts of energy. Argh! But I definitely can't tell anybody, particularly my parents, because they'll think I'm just using my CP as an excuse. After all, they have no empirical proof of this statistic, and the only way they'll get it is to hook me up to one of those muscle monitor thingys. And that's not gonna happen. 


So I sleep on, hoping they don't notice, but knowing that they do, because I feel their judgment. "Why are you still in bed? What time did you go to sleep last night? It's already 10:30! Wow that was a long nap!" And on, and on, and I can't explain. Nobody really understands unless you live in my body.


The rest of my complicated sleep issue lies in the fact that I have dysthymia.  Merriam-Webster.com defines dysthymia as "a mood disorder characterized by chronic mildly depressed or irritable mood often accompanied by other symptoms (as eating and sleeping disturbances, fatigue, and poor self-esteem)." For me, the sleep disturbances would manifest themselves in not being able to shut my brain off until about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Believe me, I wanted to. I really tried. But after laying there for 45 minutes, you sort of realize that it ain't gonna happen. So I'd haul myself out of bed, go into the bathroom, and convince myself that it was okay to take another sleeping pill, yet again. I swear, for that three years of my life (which not coincidentally coincided with seminary), I should have bought stock in Unisom. And I hated taking pills. I hate taking pills. But I felt like I had no other choice. I had to find a way to stop the swirling mash of theological readings, paper writing, quiz-taking, church-working, friendship-maintaining STUFF that made up my life. So I took pills. Lots of them. And lots of naps. I could usually manage about 3-4 hours before my alarm went off in the morning, and if I was lucky, I found time for a two-hour nap somewhere later in the day. If I didn't, well then my day just passed in a fog of fatigue. That fuzzy, not-quite-there, pea soup, out-of-body feeling became part of my daily existence. I grew really sick and tired of living 20 hour days, and I'm sure that my attitude showed it. Sorry, people, if I bit your head off. That was the fatigue talking.


Finally, I went for my annual doctor's appointment at the end of the summer in 2009, and she never fails to ask me how I feel (I love her). And unlike a lot of patients, I don't just say, "Fine." She wants to know, she's my doctor, I'll tell her. "Oh, fine,", I say. "You know, tired, stressed, distracted. But that's normal. "It's been going on for about five years now." 


"You know," she said. "You always say that. But you never look like it. You always look so calm and put together."


I ruefully think, "Damn! I do a good job of hiding this!"


And I say as much to her, only without the swear word. It's been five frickin' years lady! I want to sleep!


"Here, try this." She says, writing out a prescription for 10mg of an antidepressant. 


"Oh, no. Those don't work for me. I Already tried that remember? The Effexor made me dead inside. Took away my personality. And I have a great personality. And besides, Jaco told me that dysthymia doesn't respond to medication very well." 


"Well, try it anyway. This is different. You never know."


So I did. I took the medication home, and I tried it. Well, first, I threw the first two weeks of medication down the toilet because my mother and I had a discussion about whether or not I should go back on an antidepressant. So I had to go back to the doctor's office and get another supply. But I took the pills.


And you know what? They work. I sleep now. I have a little bit more energy. I don't feel like I'm going to fall off the edge of the precipice of life nearly as often. I'l exchange Unisom for my prescription meds any day. 


But I still worry, every night, about whether or not I'm going to be able to fall asleep. And I still take to my bed at a later hour compared to the rest of the world. It's somewhere between 12:30 and 1:30, but hey, that's an improvement from 3:00 or 4:00! And I curse myself for being such a night owl when the world likes to get going before I even think God should be awake. On second thought, maybe God is sleeping, but my parents are up, therefore, I should be too, the reasoning goes. 


So I curse my sleeping habits. I curse the little girl who could sleep for 14 hours, the teenager who needed 10, the young adult who couldn't manage more than four, and now this person, who still needs ten, and who takes ten, because right now, she doesn't have a reason to get up in the morning. I'll post more about this phrase in the morning, but trust me, I'm not suicidal. So an antidepressant can't fix everything.


And sleep is complicated.