{"id":3405,"date":"2023-08-28T12:14:06","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T18:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irenenorth.com\/writings\/?p=3405"},"modified":"2024-04-22T02:46:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T02:46:03","slug":"sleeping-would-be-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/2023\/08\/28\/sleeping-would-be-nice\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleeping would be nice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

My clock at an angle, which makes the moon phase look wrong.<\/p><\/div>\n

I woke up at 11:30 p.m., panicked and sweating. It\u2019s common occurrence. My right eye hurt \u2013 another frequent notation in my sleep log, which is usually connected to the entire right side of my face hurting.<\/p>\n

Working with my therapist, I have an inkling of what some of these things are, but it\u2019s going to take time to figure them out. I have to piece together what\u2019s happening and why, while listening to what my body is telling me. Unlike my brain, my body can\u2019t paint pictures or speak.<\/p>\n

When I am asleep, I experience a variety of flashbacks. Some are vivid in minute detail, but often, they are of the emotional variety. I spend a lot of time calming myself down and reassuring myself I am, indeed, safe.<\/p>\n

By 11:47 p.m., the nausea pill I took at 9:30 p.m., wasn\u2019t working. I had taken it after a quick, intense flash of something that hasn\u2019t come up in more than a year. I thought I was okay. I wasn\u2019t. My pulse was rapid. I felt like I was going to puke.<\/p>\n

I tried all the things I know to slow it down, to stay grounded. I remember I was biting the right side of my tongue. I had to consciously tell myself to stop doing it. I had flashes of [redacted].<\/p>\n

I looked at the clock. 12:04 a.m. Everything hurt so much. It was everywhere all at once and the feeling overwhelmed me. Then, there was nothing. Only cold.<\/p>\n

It was so cold. I had broken out in a cold sweat and was shivering. I remember telling myself it would be okay. The pain and the nausea went away. I can finally get some sleep. I tossed my Mandalorian comforter over me and closed my eyes.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, my nausea was at a nine. In hindsight, I probably should have let myself vomit, but I desperately didn\u2019t want to do it. I was desperately trying to stop the screaming, which was coming from me. <\/p>\n

My jaw was clenched, another common occurrence. It happens so often I sometimes mention it nonchalantly. My stomach hurt, too. It was more than nausea. I held my stomach like everyone does when some part of their body hurts. It\u2019s instinct \u2013 to hold what hurts \u2013 but the pain never goes away.<\/p>\n

It was 12:15 a.m.<\/p>\n

Clocks ground me. I don\u2019t know why. I once tried to figure it out, but I decided I don\u2019t really care. They keep me in the here and now and that\u2019s okay with me. Any time anything helps me to not dissociate or have a flashback is cool in my world. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s just\u2026..they didn\u2019t work today. They were merely record keepers of each instance I dissociated.<\/p>\n

12:27 a.m. – The nausea settles in at a 3. I recognize it well. It\u2019s the 3 I\u2019ve lived with for decades. After doing some EMDR in February it went away for a while. That\u2019s a story for another time. The past few months, it\u2019s been intermittent. Some days, I get a reprieve. Some days are a nearly unbearable pain. Some days the nausea meds work. Some days they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

My heart rate was elevated, again. My stomach was churning. I leaned my head off the edge of the bed and foolishly held my stomach.<\/p>\n

12:39 a.m. I lurch upward in bed, gasping for air. I feel hands around my neck. I know no one is there. There is no time to tell myself I am safe. My mind is 100% focused on being able to breathe. I have other physical reactions and make an assumption this is related to my trauma of [redacted]. I hear screaming inside my head. It is me, again.<\/p>\n

12:51 a.m. It\u2019s the last time I remember looking at the clock. My nausea has settled in to its comfortable 3. My jaw is clenched again. I go through the process of sorting it out. I\u2019m sweating. I fall asleep debating on whether or not I should get up and change my shirt.<\/p>\n

Somehow, I managed to sleep nearly four hours. Maybe I did sleep four hours. I have two clocks I can view from my bed. The one at the foot of the bed reads 4:50 a.m. The one on the desk across from my head reads 4:48 a.m. It doesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s close enough. I slept for four hours. That\u2019s one of my goals in therapy is to consistently sleep four hours. I\u2019m guessing when that happens we\u2019ll go to five and then six. <\/p>\n

I need to get up at 5:30 a.m., and make sure Paul is awake for work. My brain begins to plot out my day. I\u2019m not sure how to get it all done, but I have to.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a process I\u2019ve repeated thousands of times over the years. I have a job to do today. I make promises, which must be kept.<\/p>\n

At 5:15 a.m., pain from a flashback of [redacted] hits. I struggle to stay in the present. My nausea has a little extra kick to remind me of where I am.<\/p>\n

I get up and lie to myself that I can write two stories before my story interview at 1 p.m. I am capable of doing so. I know deep down it is not going to happen. I spend a few minutes trying to not think of myself as a failure. <\/p>\n

I wander into the kitchen, feed the cats, and put the tea kettle on. I walk into the bedroom and tell Paul, \u201cIt\u2019s 5:40 a.m. It\u2019s time to get up.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sundays are usually good days for sleep. And by good I mean I only wake up a couple of times and have no flashbacks. I had several days last week that were good.<\/p>\n

My mind starts to think about the work I need to do. I manage to finish one story around 10 a.m. I\u2019m already done for the day.<\/p>\n

Fuck. I remember I\u2019m supposed to make a bunch of phone calls. It\u2019s 11:51 a.m. Too late for calls. If someone says they want a phone interview now, I can\u2019t get it done and get to my 1 p.m., on time. I fucked up another day. Maybe I didn\u2019t. Fuck if I know. I\u2019m tired.<\/p>\n

Can I be okay after the interview for phone calls? Afternoons are difficult for me. I hit a wall around 2 p.m. each day. My doctor and therapist have ideas and we\u2019re trying to figure it out, but I think it\u2019s probably the constant sleep deprivation.<\/p>\n

Some nights are worse. While this one has knocked me down, I wasn\u2019t completely out. I accomplished part of my goal. Nights like Sunday occur 2-3 times a week. It\u2019s better than the 4-5 times a week of a couple of years ago. <\/p>\n

When I say I didn\u2019t sleep well last night and\/or I had a flashback, this is usually something along the lines of what happened. I don\u2019t explain it too much. Some people can\u2019t hear what happened. Some people don\u2019t care. Some don\u2019t understand. Some don\u2019t want to understand.<\/p>\n

Last night, I didn\u2019t really sleep. I used to think I did, but have found I spent my life often mistaking dissociation for sleep. <\/p>\n

Progress comes in little steps. In my attempt to keep myself moving today, I sat down and wrote this all out. <\/p>\n

Thanks for coming to my shitty, rambling TED Talk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke up at 11:30 p.m., panicked and sweating. It\u2019s common occurrence. My right eye hurt \u2013 another frequent notation in my sleep log, which is usually connected to the entire right side of my face hurting. Working with my therapist, I have an inkling of what some of these things are, but it\u2019s going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[294,336,354,377],"class_list":["post-3405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-ptsd","tag-sleep","tag-stress","tag-trauma"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3517,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions\/3517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}