Monday, February 22, 2021

About Me Monday: To Sleep Perchance?

 


Image by jay Clarke from Pixabay

This is a response to a post by Kendra about writers and sleep.

https://taintedtrinity.ddns.net/wordpress/2021/02/03/iwsg-sleep-and-writing/

Sleep and I have never seen eye to eye. 

My mother delights in telling people what an awful baby I was because I would, apparently, never sleep for more than two hours at a time. 

I learned much later in life that I had ADHD, which accounted for my being "scatterbrained," a "space cadet," and "flaky". 

However, my son also has ADHD, and while his sleep patterns are all over the place (sometimes he goes to bed around 6 PM, sometimes at midnight, sometimes not till the wee hours of the morning) he always slept well as a baby. In fact, I had to wake him up every 2 hours to feed him because his blood sugar was prone to crashing.

My son thinks that he may have a 25-hour circadian rhythm. It makes sense to me. He's high-functioning autistic, which may affect his sleep as well. Outside of his issues with anxiety and depression, his sleep issues are a key factor in why he has never been able to hold a "normal" job.

Back when I was still working, I had problems with not being able to fall asleep at night and, conversely, falling asleep during the day. Unless, of course, I wanted to. I had trouble falling asleep when I got home after working a night shift. However, I had to fight to stay awake while driving home. I would roll the window down to let the cold air blast me in the face. I would pinch and punch myself. I would blast music and sing at the top of my lungs.

The inability to sleep if I had to work in the morning may have been partly due to anxiety. I didn't really want to go to work and was afraid of fucking up. I got sent home from one temp job for being sleepy. Even now that I'm on disability and am usually able to fall asleep by midnight, I still have issues with daytime sleepiness, which was one of the issues that led to my being approved for disability. 

There is a huge stigma on people who aren't the "early to bed, early to rise" type. All you have to do is get to bed earlier like the Good and Saintly do. Easy enough, unless you just aren't wired that way.

~Sleepy Cie~

2 comments:

  1. Once upon a time I was a champion sleeper. Those days have gone.
    My partner can (and does) sleep for ten hours or more at a stretch. I envy him, but know that his depression is part of the reason.

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    1. It's the same with my son. It makes it hard to plan for meals because I never know if he's going to be going to bed at 6 in the evening, 6 in the morning, midnight, or 2 in the afternoon. For instance today I had just finished a snack and had something warming in the oven when he made his way downstairs. I didn't want to eat again right away and I decided to finish watching this dumb movie that I'd been watching. He decided it was a good time to move furniture. The light was bothering my eyes but I didn't want to say anything that would discourage him. He gets bursts of industriousness and it's best to encourage that, but sometimes they occur at inopportune times.

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