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Who Needs a Therapist When (Pt. 18)

To Sleep, or Not to Sleep

By Haybitch AbersnatchyPublished 5 years ago 3 min read
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Image Courtesy of Gregory Pappas CC

So, I am close, so close, to seeing a doctor.

And, I am so worried that they are going to have bad news for me. That it will take another 3 months for me to even get tested for sleep apnea, or that I do have sleep apnea (I have a mild phobia of things on/smothering my face while I sleep so I am not really looking forward to a diagnosis that would mean getting used to strapping a thing to my face. It would probably go the way of my night guard for tooth grinding, and I'll wind up not using it and just accepting that I will feel lousy.), or that it is all because of my weight (which is its own looming doom of trying to deal with. If an under 1k calorie diet doesn't work, what drastic measures could they possibly take?), or that my sleep issues aren't that bad and I should just suck it up.

And in the meantime, I'm off all my sleepytime drugs. Because, I want them to get a clear reading. I want them to see how bad it gets. I want them to know.

But, right now it means that between stress and crappy sleep, I am exhausted. All the time. I would lie down on the filthy floor here at work and take a nap, if I weren't 100% sure that that is the route that leads to me getting fired. My head hurts, my shoulders hurt, my teeth hurt from all the grinding. And I feel fuzzy and disconnected. A couple days ago was bad enough that I probably shouldn't have been driving. Fugue states and the impression of surreality doesn't exactly bode well for my safety on the road.

It doesn't help that I'm working a lot more hours at my job. Which means that I'm having less time to sleep in, and less time to build my worktime around the needs of my stupid brain, and less time to do things before I have to fall asleep at night. It means more stress, more hours thinking about how much I hate this job, and how powerless I feel to move from this job into one that I won't hate. It means spending long days staring at the admin here and wishing that I'd applied for her job. Wishing that I was done with customers and pretending to function and pretending to not be a grumpy, burned-out, bitter old woman.

But mostly, I am so, so, so incredibly sick of the stress dreams. I am sick of waking up with a sense of dread settled over my chest and choking around my throat. I am sick of arriving at work and being overwhelmed by all the things that I'm pretty sure didn't happen. I'm pretty sure they were dreams. But, maybe they weren't. Maybe they just felt like dreams because all of my recall is fuzzy and vague since the depression got really bad a couple years ago.I'm sick of dreading falling asleep. Of feeling my heart start to race at the thought of the dreams. Of being torn between falling asleep because I am desperately tired, and not falling asleep because it is only bad times and struggles on the other side of that wall of consciousness.

I need to see a doctor. I need them to offer a solution. One that will actually fix things, rather than just complicate things further.

And, I'm afraid that seeing the doctor isn't going to result in any of that positivity. I'm afraid that the answer will simply be that I am fucked for life.

I'm not ready for that, it turns out.

Let's hope I don't have too many nightmares about that over the coming month.

Last Week's

First Week's

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About the Creator

Haybitch Abersnatchy

I'm just a poor girl, from a poor family; spare me this life of millennial absurdity. I also sometimes write steamy romances under the pen name Michaela Kay such as "To Wake A Walker."

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