sleeeeeep.
I feel so vulnerable writing about some of this stuff, so you get the squishy naked ray-face on the glass to set the scene. So. I had been working through some racing heartbeat sweaty freezing hands not sleeping much hypervigilance for a few weeks. Was sleeping in later than usual on the weekends and feeling more and more worn down. And somehow the adrenaline feeling wound down and other things picked up and my circadian rhythym shifted by a good 4 hrs and really messed with my ability to function. I'll explain, but I am worried about my job right now, feels like I have not been able to do it well lately.
So two weeks ago Wednesday I was real anxious and alert and trying to hear every single sound to not be surprised by something, normal for the few weeks before, but that next morning I didn't jolt awake at 6 or 7am like I had been. Nope, that was Thanksgiving and I had already cancelled all of my plans and picked up something to cook for the evening, so I just slept. I slept until 10. And it was great.
Consider this a trigger warning for this whole section of posts.
boring topics can be very triggering, fyi
Thursday was tough though, it was Thanksgiving and big family holidays are always difficult when my family all think that it is my choice to be alone. They don't realize how difficult it is to be close to them, to feel accepted by them and free to be however I am that day. They still celebrate every other Christmas and every other Thanksgiving with the man who sexually assaulted me for years growing up, the effects of which are still fucking me up and frequently making it difficult to want to live. Everybody in my family knows, I am open about it with them. And I do not have a single family member who has said I believe you, and now that I know that he sexually assaulted you (repeatedly, over years) I no longer feel like being friendly with him, or letting him in my house. Maybe it would be different if he had assaulted me when I was an adult, maybe that would make it easier for them to believe.
But that is a conversation for another day, the point is that most holidays leave me feeling sad and alone. So this Thanksgiving I alternated crying, tv, and a little bit of putting things in the microwave in my kitchen full of dirty dishes. and drinking. And that was it, that shifted my cycle. Friday I only slept in until 8, hadn't been awake all that late, but that weekend of waking and crying and feeling nauseaus and sleeping and feeling worse with every additional day of not cleaning anything and not doing anything useful and not even feeling ok going outside. By that Monday I was shifted, not able to get to sleep before 1, not being able to get up at my usual 5:30-6:30, and feeling worn down and sick like my whole body was made of lead. and when that happens it always feels like, my inner narrative feels like I'm dying. like if I don't keep pushing as hard as I can just to feel like life is moving some tiny heavy bit forward, then the stillness will crush me and I will die. and I will catch myself thinking 'oh my god this feels awful, it hurts, I hurt, I feel like I'm dying' but it is generalized, I mean my aches and pains are worse but mostly it feels like a physical pain from a non-physical source. Not a pain in my knee, it is a pain in my everything. This is usually when I get sick, or get so overwhelmed by feeling like this that I feel like I have to call in sick because I can't bear leaving the house and feeling worse. Which is dumb, in the house I see all of the tasks I have failed at and outside the house sometimes things feel better. but it doesn't matter, it is like something locks up in my chest and it gets stronger and paralyzes me the closer I get to leaving. When I push through and leave the house while feeling like this it makes panic attacks, every single time and sometimes on and off for the next few days. but we weren't talking about that, were we? we were talking about sleep...
It makes me feel trapped...and then underwater
Last week I kept getting into work later and later. Called in sick one day that week, Wednesday maybe? Therapist finally got through to me that week, I've had this diagnosis for over a decade now but still feel like how I am doing is totally based on how successful I have been at doing all the healthy things, so if I stop doing those things or stop feeling able to do them then symptoms are my own damn fault. and I am not perfect and always make to-do lists longer than I can complete so am never getting all of the healthy things done, it is not possible to do all that and all the stuff I tell myself to do for work. So was complaining about how it sucks for this stuff to be flaring up now, and she was like yeah, its like an injury, sometimes you can do things to make one more likely but sometimes it just happens out of the blue. and that...shifted something in my baseline perspective. like maybe this actually just is how I am doing now. So instead of railing against it to myself and getting pissed off with myself, I just let it be. and tried to keep going to work. I wouldn't feel sleepy until 2am, and would have such a hard time getting up. I started taking all of my sleepy-calm nighttime meds. Prazosin and trazodone, apparently dudes risk priapism but that is not dangerous for women. but this whole time I keep feeling more nausea and the nonspecific pain drops into physical places, lower back, scapula, stomach cramping, shoulder, behind a knee, twingy ITB, eye pain and headaches. And when I finally will myself out of bed after taking meds early but not sleeping until late, well I can get up and walk around but I'm not able to open my eyes much or have any balance or fine motor control until at least 10am. Last week I had 2 half-days and one day out sick and my body settled into one of those disordered sleep patterns. sleeplate/wakelate->sleeplate/wakeearly->sleeplate/wakelate->sleeplate/wakeearly. Even after a 3 hr night and a full day's work I am exhausted but still not able to sleep until 12 or 1. This week I was in late 1 day and out sick 2, my projects are all falling behind and my colleagues are picking up the slack and I think my boss is pissed.
I hate making meetings more difficult for him, he is so kind and thoughtful with me. So I'll just switch on super-focus, it used to work fine.
But yesterday and today I didn't change out of my pjs, didn't bathe, didn't leave the house, didn't cook, I listened to my body and my body feels worn out. Every time I would stand up before 4pm I would suddently get dizzy and have just enough time to drop to the floor and hang on until things stop spinning. it sounds medical but it always sounds medical, these ptsd things flare up and manifest in physical ways. I have had 2 colonoscopies and CT trying to track down the intestinal pain and nausea and...stuff, but it looked pretty normal, just a little gastritis. I have had 3/4 of my body flare up in a patchy flaky rash, eczema flaring up bad for no reason except I already felt like I was dying. Sinus infections that won't go away, bladder infections that jump up to my kidneys, chest pain and heart pounding with stress, flu that turns into pneumonia with asthma attacks, Icy dry hands and feet almost all the time, kidneys hurt, eye twiches, and exhaustion. Stress and lack of sleep suppress my immune system so that when I am having a hard time the stress of the experience makes my body physically weaker, and then I can't always tell if it is psych symptoms or physical ones I just know that I hurt and can feel myself dying. Sometimes it is physical and my Dr can help, sometimes they follow up with testing and everything look fine. She knows that I can't always tell what is physical so doesn't treat me like a terrible hypochondriac, but I tell myself that I am.
not the only one who feels trapped underwater
...So sleep. it is 3:30 am right now. I called in sick today, but had to leave a message. My boss did not write back. He has seen me work through more than a few bouts like this over the years, I'll call it whatever the Dr looks for (which is based on whatever I talk about, right?) but I never fully believe it. I am less healthy than most of my colleagues, they can tell I have a chronic something, but I don't want anybody to know it is ptsd. I don't like being treated differently, I am already working hard enough to be thought of as an engineer and not a lady engineer. I already make my own hours and can listen to music at work and can work independently and not talk with people much for a day or two if I need to, I already have all of the accommodations that you would ask for to help reduce ptsd symptoms. But sometimes something happens (maybe this time it has been just talking with family more? they tell me about my abuser/father's his battle with lung cancer, recently had a surgery with 50/50 odds of survival, and I feel scared and aroused and angry and trapped in these old responses, and trying to reconcile all of that with my worldview that all things are essentially holy, the inner essence of all things is that spark of magic divinity, the spark in that energy-dense space between sea-quarks and the space between the bonds in molecules and the holy silence between the breaths of every single person, no exceptions. so that has been a struggle, maybe that plus watching the rise of racism and xenophobia sweep across Europe and India and the US and wondering how fast and how much the future will change.
So I need to calm down and get my life back. I need to do more work to keep my job. I need to get better sleep so I can reset my schedule (it is 3:35am now and dog is gently snoring)and I need to do all the things that will help me be healthier, exercise and yoga and meditation and dogruns and gardenwork and hiking and cleaning the kitchen and cooking all of the holiday cookies and giving them away. NBD, I'll just to all of that this weekend or I am a total failure and deserve to lose my job. Its tricky...Usually in October I hit fuckit day and then do better. It is the day where I decide that living is worth it so fuck the to-do list and go do whatever the fuck you feel like doing. If you feel like doing a thing that is progress, so go do that thing and then you are already healthier than watching tv and wanting to die. enough whateverthefuckIwant (with picture, sometimes) and I stop hurting so bad. I guess I hadn't thought that fuckit day was possible today, was safe. But I need to face, once again, that doing whateverthefuck is more functional than doing nothing, and that it is ok to take some time to want to live again before trying to do all the things, I'll have a better chance of getting back to functional. And I need a week of being extremely functional next week.
Well that got long, and real. but now I see again how to get myself out of bed. good talk thanks bro.
do what gets you out of bed, you don't have to be trapped
