You know, sleep. No, no, I don't know because I can't and it's making me very unhappy right now.
To start with, I am crazily busy right now. Like no free days in my diary for two months, double booking myself, fist pumping and crying 'yes!' when I realise I have an available time slot to do laundry busy. I can't even work out why I'm so busy. I am working more, and I have more appointments than usual, and I've started driving lessons, and it's summer so there seems to be more socialising, and everyone is having birthdays and oh yeah, did I mention I enrolled at university again (again, again, it seems I will not be satisfied until I have enrolled at all of them. Now if only I could get the finishing the degrees bit down.) Ok, so there's a lot going on and because I work on a casual rotating roster that includes nights I'm frequently getting home at work at 9.30pm and then needing to be at an appointment or back at work the next morning quite early (anything before 10.30am feels early to me) and it's just fucking with me. I'm exhausted but I get into bed and just can't sleep. I've been taking sleeping tablets way more than I'm comfortable with so I'm fearful of becoming dependent on them plus I have immense paranoia that they'll do their job too well and I'll sleep through my alarm the next morning.
I've reread every article and discussion board on bipolar and sleep and the same message gets hammered out each time; routine, routine, routine. But what if my life doesn't allow for routine? I don't have a nine to five job. When I get home after 9.30 I'm not able to just brush my teeth and go straight to bed. Often I haven't even eaten dinner by that time. And if I don't have to be somewhere early the next morning I'm going to allow myself the eight or nine hours of sleep I rarely get which means I won't wake up at the same time as those mornings I'm trotting off to appointments. Is that the wrong thing to do though? Am I better being in a routine of sleep deprivation? And even if that were the case what do I do about those times when my body just flips the bird to routines and alarms and appointments I've made and conks out on me for 14 1/2 hours like it did on Sunday night through to Monday afternoon?
I'm kind of blaming that big sleep reservoir for some of my sleeping woes this week. Not only did it damn what little routine I had (wake up when it's still morning time please) but I'm sure I've also gone into sleep credit or some bullshit in my sleep bank and now my brain is convinced it doesn't owe me any.
I also blame Seroquel. Of all the drugs I've had to take it rates up there with the one that gave me brain zaps and the one that gave me a facial tic as my least favourite. It makes me fat and dopey and clumsy and I'm aware that the hours late in the evening when I feel most alert and clear headed are also when I have the lowest levels of Seroquel in my system. It's hard to go to bed when I finally have the wherewithal to organise otherwise neglected areas of my life. But it's too sedating for me to take in the mornings so what are my options.
So basically I'd be much better at managing sleep and bipolar disorder if it weren't for that medication I take for it or for, you know, that pesky life I live where I have to have a job and do things and stuff.
It's 4am. Now is the worst time to have not yet slept. About this time I start thinking of all the hours yof tomorrow that should be productively devoted to doing things that I'll be sleeping through and how I probably won't even feel well rested when I do wake up and I wonder if it wouldn't be better to just get up now and tackle something I haven't had time to do this week. I have a drain that needs unclogging. And my desk is a disaster area, I could organise it. This really isn't hypomanic Katie talking, just time poor and pragmatic Katie.
I really don't know what to do.
Yes I do.
Put the phone down, it's not helping. Try one last time to get to sleep and if it doesn't work think of the streamlined desk and sparkling drain you'll have as you struggle through tomorrow.
