Pulling out all the stops....

Often, it seems like that I need to dedicate nearly all my non-work hours to sleep-promoting self-maintenance activities in order to have any chance of being able to retain my ability to function and hold onto my means of livelihood.   When internal insomnia currents are strongest, they resist my every effort – I could, after a typical work day, lift weights for an hour, do 30 minutes of intense cardio exercise at a gym, come home and cook dinner, read or play music a little, then meditate for an hour, and still not be able to fall asleep.  This summer, I had a sleepless a night or two after intense day-long hikes in the mountains (8-12 miles) involving quite a bit of elevation gain.  A woman I was dating at the time was astounded and said half kiddingly that I was “hopeless”.

I seem to be on the cusp of a similar delicate sleep ability right now – yesterday after work I went right to an hour-long tai chi class, then did 40 minutes of weight training and 30 minutes of cardio at a gym.  Right before bed I  listened to a monotonous drum tape for an hour while in a supported shoulder-stand position, and took 6mg of melatonin.   And from all that, I was only able to generate a very light and fragmented sleep-state.  I woke up at 2:30 and took 6 more mg of melatonin, drifted back into light sleep land, and woke up with a too familiar feeling of groggy buzziness at 4:30.  I then resorted to an hour of zazen (zen meditation), and finally settled into a deep dream-state at about 6:30, only to awake for good at 8AM.  

This typifies my life.  After all the pro-active sleep promotion last night, today, I’m happy to report that I’m functional, alert, and friendly.   While I sometimes wonder why I’m such a social oddity – educated, fairly intelligent (IMHO), well-employed, and still single at 47 years (with a few LTR’s in my past), at least half the time I thank my lucky stars I don’t have a family to support.  I simply would not be able to manage it all – high degree of introversion, 40+ hour work week, family responsibilities, and a need to dedicate much of my free time to self-maintenance activities just so that I have a hope of sleeping a little.

The Insomnia Abyss

Time to resurrect and redirect this forsaken blog.  I've decided to use it to document and chronicle an issue which has flattened and eviscerated my life: a chronic sleep disability.  And I use the word "disability" very deliberately here, because it is an issue which has not yielded to 8 years of treatments and approaches of all sorts of orientations.  For me, I am convinced that it is a basic dysfunction of a crucial physiological/psychological need.  And the need to document it arises because I am utterly alone in my understanding of my brand of insomnia as such.  To the unafflicted, its a curable matter of de-stressing, exercising more, eating right, practicing good "sleep hygiene", thinking positive, etc etc.  My own brand of insomnia has defied 8 painstaking years of efforts of all of the above, which I'm sure I will get to detailing at some point.

In my aloneness within the insomnia abyss, in the depths of the despair, depression, impaired cognition and reasoning, when I'm able to barely function well enough to hang onto my job and then retreat to my home, unable to socialize or even clean my apartment, feeling like death warmed over, I sometimes wish it were a better understood affliction just so I would not be so alone within its walls.  Cancer would be easier in this respect.  I say this recognizing that probably every person battling cancer (terminal or otherwise) would readily trade places with me.  And now, more times than not, as they would trade with me, I with them.  If my affliction were understood, I could describe my situation to others and and not receive the blank stares that I mostly get when I try to explain my zombie-like presence at work, my hermit-like existence, my vanishing from the activities that once sustained me and provided me with social outlets.  Nor would I have to think up excuses for bowing out of planned activities when I'm too blotto to function.

I work, I eat, I take up space, I hardly sleep.  That is my life, once which offers me a profound basis to question the value of its existence.  So if I'm able to continue writing here, I hope that it at least offers me the knowledge that my experience has been documented, and maybe it will provide the solace of commiseration to the few others who may be experiencing similar.