Rachel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kleenexwoman) wrote2009-04-22 05:01 am
kleenexwoman) wrote2009-04-22 05:01 am
I'll sleep when I'm dead.
I hate, hate, hate not being able to sleep on a normal schedule. I couldn't even when I was a kid. I would stay up late and play with my Barbies or read by my nightlight or just lie under the covers and tell myself stories for hours on end. I invented dramatic narratives, sadistic fantasies, and alien worlds just to pass the time while I waited for my brain to shut down enough so that I could drift off. (I did go through a period where I woke up at 5 in the morning, but that didn't last very long.)
When I got older, my mom and dad started to tease and nag me because, left to my own devices, I would stay up until 5 or 6 in the morning and sleep until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. It wasn't that I was trying to catch some sleep on a schedule I could handle, they decided, I was just lazy. "Don't you feel like you're wasting the day if you don't get up early?" my mom asked me once. I told her that from my point of view, she was wasting the night.
Every night, I try to get myself to sleep at a decent time. And every night, I either happily stay up until I don't realize that the sun is rising, or I toss and turn and fret in a darkened, silent room for hours. The only thing that will make me sleep is a huge dose of melatonin, but it makes me incredibly groggy when I wake up and I'm hesitant to add that difficulty to my day. The only other thing I can think of is to go to a psychiatrist and get a prescription for sleeping pills, but I don't even know that those will work on a regular basis; other people with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (what I most likely have) have said that even those don't work for them.
Unless I move to New York City or to another time zone entirely, I am probably doomed. It makes my family think I'm lazy, makes it impossible to take early classes, and might make it impossible to hold down a 9-to-5 job. The only thing it's good for is helping me stay up to talk and collaborate with people who live exactly halfway across the world and letting me catch the very late and very early shows on cable channels.
When I got older, my mom and dad started to tease and nag me because, left to my own devices, I would stay up until 5 or 6 in the morning and sleep until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. It wasn't that I was trying to catch some sleep on a schedule I could handle, they decided, I was just lazy. "Don't you feel like you're wasting the day if you don't get up early?" my mom asked me once. I told her that from my point of view, she was wasting the night.
Every night, I try to get myself to sleep at a decent time. And every night, I either happily stay up until I don't realize that the sun is rising, or I toss and turn and fret in a darkened, silent room for hours. The only thing that will make me sleep is a huge dose of melatonin, but it makes me incredibly groggy when I wake up and I'm hesitant to add that difficulty to my day. The only other thing I can think of is to go to a psychiatrist and get a prescription for sleeping pills, but I don't even know that those will work on a regular basis; other people with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (what I most likely have) have said that even those don't work for them.
Unless I move to New York City or to another time zone entirely, I am probably doomed. It makes my family think I'm lazy, makes it impossible to take early classes, and might make it impossible to hold down a 9-to-5 job. The only thing it's good for is helping me stay up to talk and collaborate with people who live exactly halfway across the world and letting me catch the very late and very early shows on cable channels.
There's actually...
Re: There's actually...
Re: There's actually...
I just don't like being up that early unless there's a roadtrip with eating and shopping.