I looked like this before I went to bed last night:
When I woke up this morning, I looked like this:
I'm tired people, TIRED.
Been a long week, what with grappling with little Junior High Shakespeares, and small dudes who wrecked on their scooters (an adventure you can read about here), and my neck being thrown out and my other kid getting her head cracked open by a golf club, and my other other kid needing emergency college groceries and my other other other kid going to homecoming and me just remembering he needs to buy a corsage and probably some sort of matching shirt and tie ensemble to go with his date's dress, and helping my whackadoo husband recover from his 100-miler by massaging his fat feet constantly (fat from pounding out 100 miles. Did I mention he did a 100-miler?), and trying to research agents to query my book, and staying up all night helping and preparing this or that project, and having various meetings, and finally getting to see a totally cool friend and her totally cool daughter after 20 years, which was totally cool, and going to my critique group, and everyone being sick (except me. mostly.)
This is all pretty normal stuff. Except . . . I can't go to sleep at night. No idea why. Just can't do it. I can be seeing double, have potato chips for eyelids, unable to feel the ground beneath the balls of my feet, not able to tell where my skin ends and the air begins, incapable of stringing three words together without inserting German, French, and the occasional Latin, feeling like my head is floating up somewhere around the light fixtures–and I canNOT make myself go to bed.
No idea why.
I need help.
Maybe I don't want to miss anything. Perhaps as a mother with everyone tugging at me all day long, that moment when my people have finally hit the sack is a little morsel of freedom I don't want to give away. Even after snuggling up to my husband, and chatting, laughing, reviewing the day, and whathaveyou–I can still pull the sheets up around his slumbering chin and go back downstairs to read. Or surf. Or stare at a wall.
Just not sleep.
If I don't do something about it pretty soon, I'm going to look like this:
. . . and probably act like this too. You know, green with a bit of blue around the edges, and definitely somewhat psychotic.
Right. So that is my quest. Figure out how to make myself go to bed at night. I am inherently a morning person anyway. I LOVE the mornings. Love getting an early start on things. Sick of forcing myself to be a night person. But it's over, baby. The time has come to OVERCOME!
Now I just need suggestions. Anyone? Anyone?
Forgive me. I know you’re way too young. [whispered voice]….perimenopause.
It made me crazy. Everything went haywire. And a couple years later, I developed Graves Disease – hyperthyroidism, which really screwed up my sleep. All under control now, but I sleep a lot less than I used to.
Hmm, many possibilities, but sounds like you are running on adrenalin and that has started to run out. Unrefreshing sleep is one of the signs of exhausted adrenals (just google adrenal exhaustion). Sleep actually requires adrenal activity and when the adrenals get exhausted, bad things happen (I am a case study for that).
Anyway, the suggestion, if this is adrenal exhaustion the solution has less to do with forcing yourself to go to bed, but rather resting the adrenals, lowering the pace of things, lowering stress during the day. Taking some irons out of the fire, so to speak.
I sometimes have a hard time getting my brain to shut up at night, no matter how tired I am. I start counting backwards from 300 by 3’s and I’m usually out around 270.
I’m trying all of these things–or at least checking them out.
Thanks you guys!
one word: AMBIEN
one more word: Melatonin
Mmmmthanks Kris, but i have a problem with giving my consciousness over to something that forces it to sleep. I might not wake up. Can’t do it. (Neurotic, much?) Maybe Melatonin. Maybe.
But in either case, I’d still have to make myself take it. And the issue isn’t NOT being able to fall asleep. I can do that. The issue is wanting to try. I just don’t want to go to bed when night time hits.
I think its psychological. From what, I don’t know.