Tag Archives: Sleep

Most people don’t get enough of it. Some do too much of it. Go without it long enough, you’ll probably get very sick and eventually die from a related cause. Just like water and air, sleep is vital to most living creatures and we humans typically spend about a third of our lives in either NREM or REM states. And like most everything else, how much is just the right amount varies from one creature to another. —LOTS more about sleep here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep

Not That Kind Of Marathon

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Aw man am I ever confused. I remember going to to my first Jewellery class on Saturday and then being completely exhausted when I got home. I decided to lie down on my comfy couch for a bit and maybe watch a movie but before I knew it I was out like a light. At some point I crawled into bed and continued sleeping well into Sunday. I vaguely recall getting up to eat a bowl of oatmeal on Sunday and seeing what a mess the kitchen was in thinking I’d get around to it on Monday by which point I should be well rested enough. My alarm rang this morning and I got up just long enough to make it back to the couch. There we many many confusing dreams and if it weren’t for Mimi’s repeated attempts at waking me (I think it was her walking all over my face that did it), then I’d still be fast asleep well into Tuesday by now, which quite honestly, at this point sounds like a pretty good idea. But. must. resist. the urge. Tomorrow is the fabric printing atelier day with the other mentally challenged people. Can’t hardly wait. I hate going there. But I promised myself I’d give it an honest try so go I must. That is, if I actually manage to get a decent night’s sleep after this latest little marathon of mine. Sheesh.

On Indian Food and Sleepless Nights

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Rarely have I been this grateful for the quiet and silence my apartment can offer. The landlord and Joe the handyman have just left, bringing with them the industrial vacuum cleaner, pressure gun and compressor that have been making deafening noise all day. This was part 2 in the process of changing the windows, which was started in mid-December. Now all that’s left for my landlord to do is paint the newly installed ledges. That should be interesting given the cat’s propensity to sit on said ledges. Hopefully they’ll be turned off the scent of wet latex enough to avoid getting their bums covered in paint.

Somehow I managed to sleep through most of the noise for the better part of the day, and I’m pretty sure it had something to do with the indian food I ordered in last night. My mom used to make delicious homemade indian food when I was growing up and it became one of my favourite comfort foods. That’s until a few years ago, when I started noticing that indian food brought about sleepless nights. Last night I had a huge craving and ordered from one of my favourite spots called Curry House (which incidentally, was one of Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s favourites too, for what it’s worth). I threw caution to the wind and ordered way too much, figuring I’d have plenty of yummy leftovers. I was especially vigilant, ate early and served myself reasonable portions, no seconds, to ensure I didn’t get bloated. But then sure enough, all night long I was twisting and turning and having one unpleasant dream after another. How could my favourite comfort food cause so much discomfort??

After that harrowing night, I was too tired to go to the Crafts workshop I’m supposed to attend on Tuesdays. I’m not so keen on going to begin with, largely because it’s specifically geared to people who have mental health issues and I’ve been seriously turned off by some of the more desperate cases who are regular attendants. One lady speaks with a freakishly high voice—as if she was constantly inhaling helium—and she talks loudly and incessantly throughout the many mandatory breaks. Apparently she’s been a regular there for over 20 years. Others just float around aimlessly, the spark in their eyes gone long ago. Last time I was there, I was playing a video game during a break when one of the… slower ladies from my group started raving on and on about how lucky I was to have a mobile phone “isn’t that just amazing?? You can make phone calls from anywhere, anytime you like…”. That seriously freaked me out for some reason; Canada isn’t exactly a third world country and technology is readily available andaffordable. Rarely before have I wished I was a smoker, just so I’d have a reason to go stand outside in the freezing cold to get peace and quiet. I spoke to the social worker that day and she told me that more than 30% of participants are considered highly functioning like myself, that I just need to give myself time to adjust. It’ll take a while before I meet any of the more ‘normal’ people; those aren’t the ones you notice, and besides they probably have other places to go than the depressing lunch room that is available on site.

In any case, I didn’t go today and stayed in bed instead. Somehow when Joe the handyman showed up and started working, I managed to sleep through the noise, while my terrified cats huddled up to me under the covers. Not sure how I managed that, but I guess I can sleep through anything if I’m tired enough. When I eventually got up and around, the noise seemed louder still and quickly became intolerable. I was trying to calm the cats down and then the nail gun would start going and they’d leap out of my arms with their claws out, tearing at my flesh as they launched themselves off me. Now I’m enjoying my quiet time, feeling incredibly privileged that I’m reasonably self-sufficient and that I can even afford to have my own place and don’t have to live in a home with other desperate mental cases…

I just wish I knew what to do with all the food that’s left. Can’t exactly invite somebody over to share leftovers, giving it to the cats isn’t an option, and I hate to waste all that good food, so I guess I’ll just have to eat it and endure a couple more sleepless nights. Or I could have it for breakfast instead of dinner. Not all that appealing either way. Maybe if I drink heavily after the meal it’ll just knock me out for the night? Hmm. Not too smart. I think I need to reset my priorities here, but where do I start?

Hijacked By Dreams

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Looking at the date today, I’m not quite sure what happened in the last three days. I recall going to the day hospital to finish up some of my crafts pieces yesterday, where T and E where friendly familiar faces who have since followed me here to blogland (you are most welcome of course). I’ve helped my friend M narrow down the selection from the hundreds of shots we took last Friday (and was reassured to see how naturally that part of art directing still comes to me. Some things really are like riding a bicycle). I remember eating jam and cheddar toast with Earl Grey tea, which is a no-brainer since I like to start off my days with that combo lately. There was an early yoga session with J and a evening of wrestling with M on Tuesday which has left every muscle in my body screaming ever since. There wasn’t so much writing for NaNoWriMo since I felt both mentally and physically exhausted.

This morning was slated to begin with an early yoga session again, but my body would not cooperate. Then the doorbell rang at 10:30 and I was so engrossed in my many confusing dreams that I couldn’t understand how it was possible for my mother to come ringing at my door like that when just the day before she had still been writing me from France. Of course, by the time I actually made it to the door it wasn’t my mother at all, but an accountant I had made an appointment with who was coming to collect papers to finally get my taxes done as agreed. But I was so out of it that, after apologizing profusely, I sent him back saying I was coming down with something and couldn’t possibly get on with our meeting today. He didn’t protest too much. These days, with H1N1 seemingly looming in every corner people will pretty much leave you alone if you imply you might be getting a bout of the flu.

Many hours and many more dreams later, my friend M put his head through my bedroom door to see how I was doing. It was well past three and I had been sleeping all day, lost in one series of dreams after another. There was lots of traveling, there was lots of flying (which apparently I’m getting more and more proficient at), there was a cyclone and a stay at a posh and deserted hotel waiting for the weather to calm down (five suites with four rooms each to share among a couple of hundred people with limited food supplies to distribute fairly, and somehow people were looking to me to make major decisions. I think they figured if I could fly, I was probably also good at survival skills in general). There was a pregnancy which lead to birthing hundreds of tiny little animals; cats of course and tiny elephants and giraffes and snakes and lions and horses and countless other creatures. I was meant to feed them but they were eaten first by the many predators who were surrounding us and not having the resources to fend them off, they got to most of my brood and only a few of them were able to survive for a while and grow a little bigger. There was a serial killer who sent his victims beautiful picture postcards before striking and I was hired to foil him somehow, being an image specialist and all. We finally managed to arrest him because of some violation with Canada post he had apparently repeatedly committed. There was a job for domestic defence involving putting a sign up in front of a juvenile prison parking lot warning would-be escapees that the stealing of cars would be severely punished, then a road trip across North America tied up to the top of a truck to avoid being seen by various affiliated gang leaders who apparently wanted to exact revenge on me for helping prevent an all-out bloodbath at the juvenile detention centre. Then a late-night TV show starring me as a tall blonde in my late 40’s who didn’t look like me at all, throwing around a basketball in a modified game where the hoops were three times as high as usual and the all-girl team wore uniforms composed of leggings and flowery tunics—very pretty but kinda silly. Somehow this was very important gig for me because it could lead to more career opportunities in late-night tv programming, even at my advanced age.

I’ve been up for almost four hours now, and two cups of tea (with jam and cheese toast, of course) later I still can’t seem to shake off the dreams. My main consolation is that this sort of thing where my waking life is overtaken by the dreams is happening less frequently these days, because there have been periods fairly recently where this state of affairs was the norm. On the upside, I guess this is the right headspace to be working on my NaNoWriMo novel right now, since I’m running behind on my word-count and this business of not being all there sure is conducive to automatic writing. Of course it could lead to even more unexpected occurrences for my characters and chances are it won’t help make my already convoluted story lines any more decipherable, but as it happens, that isn’t a consideration I need concern myself with at this time, so may as well just go with it.

Count Me in With the Poodle

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During our goal-setting session on Friday, one of the things I determined was that this weekend I wanted to be up by 12 noon at the latest. I did pretty well today, in large part due to my dad who decided to call me just a minute or two after my alarm clock rang and just before I’d had time to fall back into a deep sleep again. I had to really fight the urge to fall back asleep when I was up but by around 3 o’clock, I couldn’t stand it anymore and had to go lie down for a “short” nap, which turned out to be 5 hours long.

This is nothing new. *The sleep thing* is something I’ve been dealing with for the better part of my life. But now that I’m in treatment and that we’re running tests to evaluate my overall health, I’ve decided to make the sleep thing my priority. I had a talk yesterday with the head shrink—a very nice man who is open to discussion and encourages patients to think for themselves and contribute to both diagnosing and resolving problems—very rare qualities for a shrink. I told him about my bout of Mono when I was 3 and how the fatigue I can experience most days feels very similar to what I experienced back then. I had mentioned this to other doctors over the years but so far they had all dismissed the idea before I’d even gotten all the words out of my mouth. This time, Doctor F was willing to consider my theory that since I had Mono so young, maybe some neurological pathways or chemical reactions in my brain were affected by the illness and left me with permanent chronic fatigue symptoms associated with the “kissing disease”.

I’ve started doing a little bit of research online. At first I wanted to find out whether there is such a thing as “sleep addiction”. It seems not. What very little information I was able to glean was from message boards and forums such as the one I found on sleepnet.com where back in May 2000 “blue” had this response about whether it was possible to have a sleep addiction: “Certainly people may seek escape in sleep, but would a normal (even addiction-prone) person actually be able to BE asleep as often as all that?”. The answer of course is no, as anyone who has ever tried to fall asleep on cue can attest. Why it is I hadn’t done any research on this issue before, I really can’t say, but my guess is I was probably just too tired. Just a cursory look at Sleep Disorders on Wikipedia gives me hope that maybe there is a diagnosis for my condition: Narcolepsy doesn’t sound like such a stretch from what I’ve gathered so far. In and of itself, a diagnosis is pretty useless, but for me it might mean 3 things: 1) there just might be a way to “treat” my problem (though I get the feeling probably not) 2) I’ll finally have scientific proof that I don’t sleep so much purely as a form of escapism. And most importantly: 3) I’ll be able to put to rest my concern that I’m just a lazy, good for nothing motherfucker (no offense mom).

The Bed-In Before the Bed-In

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This girl seemed to channel the whole hippie vibe lying in this bed which was at everybody’s disposal.

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This photo-ready couple hopped into bed wearing their pj’s

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In this interactive exhibition there were many opportunities for visitors to leave their imprint.

Before my own bed-in experience this weekend, there was a visit to the Imagine exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts commemorating 40 years since the famous Elton John/Yoko Ono bed-in, circa 1969 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, right here in Montreal. I was glad to catch the exhibit when I did because it was ending last weekend, and though I wasn’t all that interested in it initially, when I found out that Yoko Ono had curated it, it became a can’t miss. I more or less ran through the better part of the exhibit because I was freaked out by all the crowds who’d taken over, mostly late-comers like me, but luckily I was with a fellow participant from the Day Hospital who had seen it already and didn’t mind going at my pace, even if that meant missing half of it and grabbing a few quick phone-camera pics of the other half. I had planned on posting them over the weekend but then… I couldn’t stay awake long enough to do anything about it until now.

Today I had a long conversation with one of the nurses and spent my entire therapy session trying to figure out why and how I could have slept for that long. I wish I could say I stay in bed to promote world peace but in my case, I stay in bed to promote my own inner peace, which would be fine if it didn’t involve a whole lot of escapism and avoidance and ended up robbing me of days and weeks of time which could be used to doing other stuff. Stuff you do when you’re awake and fully conscious I mean, because when I’m sleeping I seem to keep awfully busy in my dreams. I guess we’ll figure it all out in due time. Or not. Maybe I should start looking for a Sleep-Addicts Anonymous chapter in my area. Or better yet, I could maybe find a way to earn a living that way or at the very least find ways to make the best of it, the way Alexandre did and hey, if he found happiness by never getting out of bed, why shouldn’t I?

This is (Sorta) Funny

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After sleeping for three straight days, I woke up around 7:30 and decided to get myself in gear and off to the day hospital just a short while ago. Took my shower, had my morning OJ/grapefruit juice, fixed my hair, got dressed, got my lunch and breakfast ready and made it out the door (almost) in time for the 9:18 bus, but I wasn’t too worried about catching it since there’s also a 9:35 bus that gets me in not too too late when needed.

Just before stepping out I checked the weather report which was predicting a warm (27ºC) and overcast day. Then going down my steps I thought “wow, they mean it when they say overcast” and said out loud “gee you’d think it was 9 in the evening it’s so dark out” one of my neighbours, a religious nutter, was walking by at that moment and I know she heard me, but she just ignored me as she usually does. I walked a block further towards the bus stop as it kept getting darker and darker which is when I started getting serious second doubts. I ducked into the convenience store “I know this is a strange question, but is it morning or evening right now?” “Evening” said my Chinese friend with a chuckle. “Ok… how about this: what day is it?”.

Monday. Monday evening. Boy am I out of it. All those dreams swirling around in my head… sure have me confused. But hey, this way I’ve got a head start on tomorrow morning at least.

Saturday

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Today was a day of sleep and strange reveries. The alarm went off at 10:30 though it felt more like pre-dawn to me and so I fell back in bursts of fitful sleep well into late afternoon. There was a very long, very convoluted dream playing while I slept which I woke from occasionally only to check whether Mimi was still watching over me at her station by my feet before slipping back into the dream. There was a poorly organized trip to Asia which required last minute rush preparations, there was family, there was somebody having a grandiose and very important marriage, there was flirting between young men and women which to my horror and to their amusement quickly turned into violent sex, there was me being a great disappointment to all and especially to my mother who let me know in no uncertain terms she no longer considered me her daughter (!) then my aunt who still tried helping me as best she could even though nobody wanted her to and I was all but unresponsive, there was a promising young suitor who eventually felt forced to move on to other candidates seeing as I was proving ufit as mariage material and of course there were cats showing up everywhere , all of which is just a very small portion of this particular dream-freak-show. From all this, the message the dream made sure to communicate to me in no uncertain terms is that the only road to my salvation is to start believing in fairy tales again. Easier said than done since in my opinion, a stubborn belief in fairy tales is what’s brought me the greatest grief and trouble in my life. I think I’ll just let that one sit and stew for a good long while.

My meals consisted of hazelnut milk chocolate and fresh cherries even though my fridge was filled with meal options and to finish off the day there was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a lovely movie based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald which I must get my hands on. I cried for the full second half of the movie which is nearly three hours long, so now am sufficiently exhausted to tuck myself in early and hopefully get rested enough so that by tomorrow I will be able to tell the difference between dreams and movies and reality and maybe even make some kind of useful contribution to the day.

Blank.

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That’s what my brain feels like tonight. Even searching for a quote to plug into this box seems like too much work tonight. I feel very, very confused. Maybe sleeping all day is what did it. Or maybe I mixed up my drugs or took the wrong dosage this weekend in my general state of confusion? Doubt it, but could be. Never know. I do seem to recall falling over a couple of times yesterday, which was a little scary but also pretty exciting as reminded me of my days of too much drinking and toking when I’d start falling all over myself and laugh hysterically and then eventually make my way to the can to pray to the porcelain god and sometimes eventually pass out right there and then too. Oh yes. Those were the good old days. We’ll have none of that tonight hopefully. I’ll just be extra careful while taking my shower in a moment and make sure I don’t fall out of the bathtub (no wonder I hate taking showers so much lately). Then I have to take the recycling down before lights out, so if I manage not to tumble down the stairs I’ll consider this to have been a pretty ok day after all. Wish me luck.

Torpor, Coma, Languor, Lassitude, Stupor, Hebetude…

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There was this ongoing dream while I slept the very few hours I had last night in which I was so tired and so weak I felt quite literally like a ragdoll. I was at a friend’s place passed out flat on my face in the middle of the living room floor, on which a white duvet, sheet and pillow had been deposited (by whom?) as a makeshift bed for me. When came the following morning, I opened my eyes and saw light filling the room and all was white at first, and then I started noticing that there were toys and cats, toys that were cats and cats that were toys scampering around the floor, peacefully napping on various surfaces, hiding in the corners, climbing all over me. I wanted to wake up so I could further investigate these stange mutant-like creatures, but was overwhelmed by the strong pull of Morpheus, who refused to release me from his grip. I wavered between this dreamy consciousness and what seemed like a morphine-induced coma (I can only imagine, having not actually ever taken morphine). By midday my friend’s boyfriend came into the room, his living room to listen to music, his music, and work on his computer (modern art projects combining paintings with musical compositions). Somehow, I knew that my friend had left the house and that we were alone together and I also knew that he wanted to do laundry, play his music louder and invite friends over. I could feel he was annoyed with me lying there like a corpse and refusing to budge. I felt ashamed as the sudden realization that I was attracted to him, had always been attracted to him, dawned on me now. More than anything, I wanted to get up and out of the way, but I could barely stay conscious long enough to formulate the thought before nodding back down on my face in that seemingly drug-induced torpor.

When a dog started barking right next to me, it took me a long time to come to, and opening my eyes I did not recognize my surroundings and nodded back to unconsciousness. But the barking persisted and I awoke just enough to realize the sound was coming from my alarm in “real” life and was not yet another part of that ongoing hypnotic, soporific dream. As I grew conscious of my tangible body, I understood I was feeling exactly the way I had in my dream, with the addition of a throbbing headache and the distinct feeling that a truck had rolled over my body (several times and from different directions). I decided the best place for me to spend the next few hours was precisely where I was laying.

I might have felt guilty about sleeping through what should have been walk up hill #1, then bus ride, then walk up hill #2, then first workshop, then interview with med student, then lunch, followed by a relaxation session, then 40 minute walk back home. But I had a vague memory that during a moment of semi-consciousness I had picked up the phone to alert them to the fact that I was unable to come in today. The words came with difficulty and I remember slurring out each syllable as my mind kept drifting into a different plane.

A voice inside me said “Rest Now” very gently and yet with full authority and then a yellow-tinged 16 mm documentary film featuring the last 3 days played itself in my head. So much… so much… talking. Listening. Interacting. Moving. Walking. Climbing. Thinking. Questioning. Absorbing. Rest Now, the voice said again. So I did.

A mystery remains: what did the sleeping self in my dream dream about?