"men tire themselves in the pursuit of sleep." laurence sterne
last night i spent the 5 hours i normally fight for sleep fighting for relief from my anxiety. i slept from 2-3 and awoke in the throws of a severe panic attack. i don't know what brought it about but i do know it was exasperated by my growing suspicion that the ticking mechanism in my bedside clock is getting exponentially louder. i have long suspected this but i believe after last night that i have proof.
i have been an insomniac my whole life and there are several things that i've learned along the way, some of them are:
1. limit caffeine consumption,
2. use the bed for sleep and sex only,
3. do not have a digital clock in the room,
4. go to bed and get up at the same time every day,
5. do not watch tv in bed,
6. get out of bed, go to another room and do something if sleep won't come.
1, 3 & 5 are easy, 2, 4 & 6 not so much. i don't have a digital clock in the house save for on the kitchen appliances, certainly not visible from my room, and i drink one cup of caffeinated coffee a day. i will not even pretend to know how to go to bed at the same time every night though i am almost always up around 5:30. i have also never been able to resist reading in bed. i have a small tv that is hooked up to a DVD player, but not to cable or satellite, and i very rarely turn it on. i can never make myself get out of bed when i face even a full night of wakefulness because i continue to believe that i will fall asleep...right now, no...right now...!
when i woke up anxious i began the list-making (things left to do on the house, # of clocks I can hear ticking, # of bills that can be paid with my remaining funds) and the worrying (what if i do go crazy, what if the roaring i hear in my head - like the sound of the ocean in a seashell - is more than a symptom of this 2 week old congestion, why does my new neighbor insist on parking on the street instead of in the driveway and why does it bother me so much?) btw, "bother" doesn't begin to describe how i feel about this injustice. other more appropriate words are: "anger," "infuriate" and "homicidal."
after laying awake until daybreak i finally got up and moved to the living room and watched a couple of episodes of "psych" on netflix before i sent my brother a text warning him of my impending visit to his house for a day of sports. 3 games, 3 different sports (college football, baseball, hockey) and 3 loses! it was awful, but the company was good, my parents were both there as well as my sweet, funny, gorgeous and brilliant niece and nephew. my 11 year old niece is thrilled at the fact that she is being written about right now.
i've just been home a short while and am going to post this and try my hand at getting some sleep tonight. it is, after all, after 2:00 a.m.
grace and peace
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