Insomnia Really Sucks When You Have to Be Up in a Few Short Hours

Image by un-perfekt from Pixabay

Just a few hours ago, before I realized how bad my insomnia was going to be tonight, I posted about how I am still feeling like I am in an okay place in life. Even though I am feeling okay and content for the most part, that does not mean that I don’t have any more bad days or nights. Tonight happens to be a another night where insomnia has fully taken over and it is already almost 3:30 in the morning and my alarm for work is scheduled to go off at 7:50 am…

I even just took an extra 50mg of Seroquel about 20-30 minutes ago since I have the choice to do so when I need to. That, however, has some real potential to make me completely drowsy and groggy in the morning. That is, if I ever get some sleep tonight while I still can.

I know how I get when I don’t get any or enough sleep. It completely throws me off the entire next day until I get to finally sleep off the mood that sleep-deprivation puts me in. I become an emotional, blubbering mess when I don’t sleep well the following night.

I keep telling myself that in 30 more minutes I will finally lay down. However, I have told myself that since about 10pm… just give me 30 more minutes but those 30 minutes keep passing by without me keeping my word to myself.

About once or twice a month I get into moods where I just can’t seem to force myself to go to bed no matter how much I know I need to get some sleep. When I get like that, staying busy can be aggravating and doing nothing can be just as equally aggravating. It’s like I can’t decide on what to do and it creates a war within my mind. And as the hours creep closer to when I need to be up for the day, my anxiety also usually heavily increases as well which will carry into the next day but my anxiety feels intensified by the following morning.

I feel like I do this to myself and set myself up for a bad day even though I feel like I can’t control myself when I get into these moods. It feels like I am damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. I have such great anxiety about having to try to force myself to go to bed and I am also mad at myself that I am still awake right now.

I keep stressing about how the hell I am supposed to be alert and function while at work tomorrow. I can tell my boss about the fact that I couldn’t fall asleep, but that doesn’t really help anything except to let my boss know I might not be on top of my game because I am so exhausted.

I don’t get any paid time off or sick days through my job and I have already been warned about calling out and missing work so I have no choice but to go in tomorrow. Jobs should really offer their employees mental health days off to keep their staff working at their best when stress and anxiety become too overwhelming. Then again, even if most companies offered mental health days I know my job still wouldn’t since I don’t even get holiday pay or sick days. I get that it’s a small company but damn, don’t deny your staff sick days. If you aren’t even going to offer PTO don’t get upset and out of sorts when your staff calls out sick.

I have never worked for a company where there wasn’t some sort of PTO or sick pay system in place. I will be the first to admit, that my past history with calling out of work wasn’t the best but if you don’t offer at least a few sick days you are setting your staff up for failure in a way. When you have PTO and sick pay you are more aware of how often you call out compared to always missing hours in your pay regardless for other things like appointments and inclement weather and with hours always missing it’s hard to keep up which days I missed work because of snow and which days I missed because I was sick.

I’ve only called out 3 times in 6 months due to illness, maybe even only two times, which for me isn’t too bad given there have been times I would call out of previous jobs once every two weeks. The last time I called out sick was the day after I got my covid vaccine since I woke up sick as hell to my stomach the day after I got the vaccine and my boss made me feel like I was trying to call out for reasons other than sickness and he acted like I was doing something horrible which made me feel bad on top of not feeling well.

If it were up to my boss, he would have me glued to my desk for 8 hours straight without even as much as a potty break. I had to get a note from my PCP stating that I medically have to use the bathroom more than most people due to a medical issues so my boss would get off my back every time I went to the bathroom. I take my lunch break at my desk and still get work done while eating. I only require a few bathroom and smoke breaks a day but my boss makes me feel like I’m incompetent or doing something really bad every time I tell him I am stepping out of our small office for a moment.

I hate feeling like I am always doing something wrong at work. I prefer it when my boss is out of the office because I can breathe get my work done without feeling like I fucked something up. My boss isn’t a bad guy, he just seems to not understand how he sometimes makes his employees feel without even knowing it.

I was talking to a co-worker and she agrees with me that we should have some form of PTO or sick time off and is leaving it in my hands to bring this up to our boss. Her only advice was to wait until he’s in a good mood before trying to talk to him about it.

Bosses, police officers, doctors, teachers or any one else who has a position or role that is considered higher up always tend to make me feel nervous, anxious, and so damn small. I feel people in those types of roles tend to look down on someone with a lesser role or education level. When people in these more authorative roles yells at me or even if they tell me I’ve done something wrong or made a mistake it makes me want to burst out in nervous tears and shut down. I become a blubbering mess and my fight or flight reaction wants to kick in and I either want to argue with the person or run away from them.

I have always felt uneasy and uncomfortable with people who are in power. I’ve been like that since I was in elementary school and I haven’t been able to shake that off yet. I bawled my eyes out every time a cop has pulled me over. It’s embarrassing with how intimidated I end up feeling. I wish I could get over my fear of dealing with authority figures and just ease up a little.

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It’s soon going to be 5 am and it will start getting light outside. I am no closer to sleep than I was at 3:30 am. Instead, I am even more anxious and annoyed with myself. Why does getting a good nights sleep appear so complicated for me? When you force yourself to do something, you should be able to just force yourself to achieve the task at hand and call it a day, right? So how comes forcing myself to want to do something seems like I’m still left with other options and I can’t simply just seem to get myself to do the right thing even while trying to be forceful with myself?

What I am trying to say is that I can be as forceful as I want with myself but I still can’t seem to get myself to follow through with the task at hand. All I wanted to get myself to do was lay down so I can try to sleep. But I still couldn’t bring myself to achieve even that. I guess you can’t force yourself to do something if all of you isn’t ready and willing to comply.

The thought of laying down caused anxiety, the thought of not laying down also caused anxiety. The anxiety held me back from doing what I needed to do to care for my metal health and wellbeing. And now I am so screwed the whole day. Every fiber of my being is screaming at me to lay down for the next two hours but I am almost paralyzed with the amount of anxiety that I am feeling and it’s such an uncomfortable emotion that I feel almost frozen to this spot.

Frozen is definitely the right word to describe me right now. I am too anxious to do anything, and still somehow too anxious to do nothing. I know one thing for sure, if I don’t get to lay down before my alarm goes off and I am still sitting at my desk when the alarm sounds, my anxiety will start leading to panic attacks and triple in intensity. Even if I am in bed by 6am, the anxiety will still be less than it could be if I didn’t get to lay down and get any rest at all.

I really don’t want to go to work today but there isn’t any other options for me aside from “accidentally” falling down the stairs outside of my apartment and injuring myself too bad to go to work. But then, that wouldn’t really be an “accident,” now would it?

I have this inkling that I am going to be pulling out all of the coping skills for anxiety that I know and have in my arsenal for today. I don’t have high hopes of them being effective, however. If I can get through my shift without having a mini mental break down or bawling my eyes out, it would be a miracle and an accomplished day.

I think the anticipation of how bad today could potentially turn out at work from a lack of sleep is one of the worst parts. The anticipation and not knowing how today will unravel just keeps fueling these dreaded anxious and nervous feelings that I have going on. A majority of my past experiences tells me to expect a rough day that could harbor panic attacks and emotional overloads because of how I have gotten other sleepless nights in the past. But there were a few times where I was able to manage just fine at work after a night of no sleep to my utter surprise.

I know that my anxiety tries to set me up for failure at times and will play over and over again inside my head until I’m obsessing over my anxieties and how icky I feel while it tells me how wrong everything is going to turn out before I am even able to think about how things could still turn out fine. I’ll get it stuck in my head about how horrible things will be before I even give the upcoming day a fighting chance.

I keep trying to tell myself that even with no rest at all, that today could still turn out perfectly fine. I keep telling myself to think positively and to not let my anxiety talk me into feeling nothing but panic and worry. I keep trying to tell myself that I am okay and that everything will work itself out for the best today. But with every positive thought, a negative one lurks right around the corner.

It’s like when the good part of me says I’ll be okay, the bad part tells me that nothing is okay and that I won’t be able to deal. It’s like a tug-of-war between good and evil is going on inside my mind and both sides are relatively strong but there aren’t any winners.

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6 o’clock in the morning just approached and I only have 1 hour and 50 minutes before my alarm is supposed to go off and I can’t help but feel angry and disappointed with myself for not being strong enough to even simply be able to force myself to go to bed. It can’t really be as difficult as my mind has made it out to be.

Some days after work all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for 12 hours straight. Other days, I am fine with getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep between shifts. But then, there are some days when I could be ridiculously tired but yet be unable to sleep at all like last night.

At least on a good note, I only stay up all night once or twice a month now because most days my night meds are very effective compared to before when I would be up all night once or twice a week. So at least my sleep cycle has made some real progress. It’s just trying to cope with and deal with the sleepless nights when they do arise which I am still trying to learn how to handle.

It was so much easier in the past when I would go all night without resting because I didn’t have a job for three years while I was in the process of trying to get disability because of my metal health. As much as I hate working, I don’t think I would go back to being unemployed and lacking routine and structure because of the strides I have made toward achieving stability.

Sometimes I am proud of myself for getting adjusted to having a job again and for being able to keep up with my work duties, but sometimes I feel like I am not stable enough to hold down a job without calling out frequently and some of the little comments by boss makes about me or my work ethics tears down the proudness that I was feeling. I wish my boss could see and feel what it’s like trying to hold down a job with an array of mental illnesses under your belt so he would finally understand that I really do try my hardest but that it’s challenging.

My boss will tell me to work on one task but then give me five other tasks and even though I take notes, sometimes it’s hard for me to make sure that I got everything done on his list. I am only human. Sometimes us humans need small reminders to do something without being made out to seem incompetent or slow. I am not good with having random tasks thrown at me all at once. It becomes overwhelming.

One day I will feel like I know what I am supposed to be doing and how to do it and then other days I will doubt myself and feel like a failure.

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With just a little over an hour left before I have to be up, I don’t see the point in laying down now. I feel defeated by my insomnia. It’s already getting lighter outside and the sunlight is starting to peak through the clouds. At this point, my anxiety won’t start to fade now. I just have to keep telling myself that it will be okay and that I’ve gone to work without sleep before and that everything turned out okay for the most part last time.

It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. I need to keep repeating this to myself until I start to believe that It’ll be okay. I wish thinking positive thoughts came as easily to me as the negative ones do. I’m a pro at conjuring up negative thoughts in my mind without even trying. I’m a newcomer to the positive thoughts on the other hand.

I am (kinda) sure that if I explain to my boss that I’m exhausted and didn’t get any sleep last night but didn’t want to call out either that he might take it easy on me today for showing up and understand if I am not understanding things at my normal speed or being as productive as I was yesterday at work. Sharing this information couldn’t cause things to be worse so it’s worth a shot.

It is already almost 7 am. Time keeps passing by at a hyper speed rate. When I started this post it was about 3:30am; about 3.5 hours ago. I feel like I lose track of time when I stay up while still knowing very well what time it actually is because I obsessively check the clock on my laptop. But yet, it still feels like with how quickly time has passed that I lost some time to the unknown.

I think today will be a hoodie and leggings kind of day at work. Fuck business/casual attire for today. I am aiming for comfortability. My whole body aches from sitting at my desk since I ultimately got out of work yesterday. My knees and back are screaming at me. It even feels like my fibromyalgia is flaring up and causing extra pain. I physically feel like I am in my 60s instead of my 30s.

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I think the length of this post is now comparable to a short novel. Deciding to blog and vent about my sleep woes and anxiety may have been where I went wrong last night. Had I just continued scrolling Facebook I would have gotten bored and just laid down eventually most likely.

I feel like when my alarm sounds, the loud noise could potentially cause a panic attack or anxiety attack. I don’t want to have to deal with getting dressed and brushing my hair. If I were a dude, I wouldn’t have to worry about doing my hair and I could get away with re-wearing yesterdays clothes. Easy peasy. But since I have boobs it takes more effort to get ready for work in the morning. And ugh, having to wear a bra for 8 or 9 hours today while my back and body are screaming in pain should be fun.

Well, I have to start wrapping this up (finally) because my alarm is going to go off in like 20 minutes or so. I am going to go splash cold water on my face and try to gather myself and try to minimize the brain fog and haze a bit that a lack of sleep tends to cause.

Thanks for staying up with me and reading about my inner thoughts and feelings! I know this is a lot to read so thanks again for sticking around!.

Much love,

Samantha