Time Flies When You’re Dealing With Insomnia

It’s 5:50 am and my alarm is scheduled to go off in an hour and ten minutes – at 7 am. I should be trying to cling to my last hour of sleep like a baby holding onto their favorite new toy before I have to wake up and get ready for the day like I usually do. But I woke up to a painful leg muscle cramp, also known as a Charlie Horse back in the day, and haven’t been able to go back to sleep since and that happened around 2 am.

I needed my sleep last night too since today is going to be busy, long, and feel neverending. I have an 8:30 am therapy session that I have to go to this morning since I accidentally forgot about my last session and never showed up. And then I have to go directly to work until about 5:30 pm.

Most days I don’t wake up until between 7:30-7:45 am. So waking up this morning was going to really suck for me anyway. With all the medication I take at night, it’s usually hard af for me to actually be able to wake up and start functioning in the morning like a normal person should be able to do.

I’ve tried waking up earlier and showering in the morning instead of at night to give myself the chance to fully wake up properly before having to get dressed and leave for work in the morning but that isn’t something that is realistically sustainable for me.

It feels nice to leave myself enough time to shower in the morning and it even sometimes gives me a little burst of energy but that fresh, energized feeling starts to fade after only a few hours at work and I’m back to being exhausted and pounding energy drinks to try to get me through the second half of my shift usually after I eat lunch around 12-1pm. So to me, if the end result is still the same I figure I may as well sleep in, in the morning until I have no choice but to get up or be late for work by 7:45 am when my second alarm goes off.

Even though I am more awake right now than I usually am if I had slept until my alarm sounded but I know by the time I get to work at the earliest and after lunch at the latest, that my ass is going to be dragging from not getting enough sleep and that I’ll be regretting my life choices to not fight harder to go back to sleep.

But I laid in bed for hours before deciding to say fuck it and give up on sleep. So I really did try. Failing to be able to get a good amount of rest still feels like I failed at something that I tried so hard to achieve but just couldn’t.

My anxiety is starting to get out of hand as well. I’m just going to have to wait until my shift is over to take some of my medical Marijuana THC capsules to help tame the anxiety that’s building and that will most likely hang around all day.

I feel like when most people don’t get a lot of sleep, they are just really tired throughout the day but can still handle obstacles and challenges without having a mental break down. But for me when I don’t get enough sleep I turn into this drowsy, cranky, highly anxious person that breaks down and gets emotional over the littlest of things. I really hate it. I wasn’t always like this since it was normal for me to go a few days a week without much or any sleep at all. These days, forget about it! I can’t handle it anymore.

The night hours just flew by despite wishing time would slow down a bit before having to get up and go back to work yet again. I feel like I’m always at work or dealing with something regarding work. I give myself 45 minutes to an hour to wake up in the morning and get dressed, I leave the house by 8:30 am on days I don’t have a morning appointment to get to work by 9 am. Then I’m there for 8.5 hours until 5:30 pm. I usually get home around 6 pm, and by 8 pm I am usually ready to take my night meds and start getting ready for bed. Then I have to get up and do it all over again.

I was only at my last job 8 or 9 months before my boss backed me into a corner that caused me to feel I had to quit unexpectedly. Before that I tried my hand at being a writer for about three years which gave me job feeedoms I never knew existed such as working when I wanted and making my own schedule and deadlines and being able to work from home pre-covid pandemic days.

I loved being a professional writer for various websites more than anything I had previously done in the past. Sure, I had an editor to report to but I was basically like my own boss and I loved it.

It was rewarding and it taught me to not care so much about every negative comment you receive on an article or on something you created because there is always going to be at least one person that criticizes what you do but that it’s the positive feedback that really matters and means the most. I’ve had countless people hate on something I wrote but there was always more positive feedback than negative.

My last solid job with a real employer ended after 2 years of employment after I had a mental break down and had to go on medical leave back in 2017. Adjusting to things hasn’t been easy.

I’ve been with my new employer for 1.5 months now and I am still not used to having work take up most of my time during the weekdays. Waking up early 5 days a week is still challenging for me even though it’s only supposed to take like 28 days to form a new habit such as getting used to a new schedule when you start a new job.

I still feel like having to be an adult and work for a living to survive sometimes triggers my depression because I sometimes feel like there’s nothing more to life than struggling and working which makes me feel like, “what’s the point?”

Part of the reason I missed a lot of work at my last job was because when I would start to feel myself being pulled into a depression or mania I would call off work (because I’d feel mentally run down or too all over the place) and take a mental health day which would usually make me feel better and I’d be ready to tackle work again by the next day.

So far with this job I’ve only called out sick once but my boss also scares me a little so I get too nervous to call out sick because I start to think about everything I have to get done at work and I worry about having to make up the hours so my check isn’t short. I feel like I’m finally working in this professional position and shouldn’t be calling out sick the way I used to in the past. This is a major step for me.

Well, my alarm is about to go off. Have a good day, everyone!