So, I am a major insomniac, mostly because I'm nocturnal. If I had it my way I would go to bed at 5am or around then and wake up around noon. Add to this that life in general doesn't allow for this system (see also: school, work) and I get very little sleep. This has made it so I can skate by on 4 hours a night of sleep and feel totally fine, in fact I often wake up completely naturally after 4 hours anyway. In some cases however, I get less than 4 hours and this is where it gets hairy.
This is the single most common mistake I make. I do it no less than once a week. Sometimes, I have some commitment at some unceremoniously early hour (for example this semester, although I tried my hardest not to, I have class Mon, Wed, and Fri at 7:25 AM). This ALWAYS causes the same lapse in judgment.
The fact that I have to wake up early, in this case at 6ish makes me think, "Ok, self, I need 4 hours to function properly... be in bed by 2 AM. No later." This seems like an awesome plan and I go about my day content with myself and the responsible human being I'm about to be. The problem, however, is that needing to wake up early doesn't make me any less nocturnal, and my attempt at rearranging my sleep schedule already failed monstrously (this is also something I convince myself I can do every semester and also always goes badly).
The night proceeds in one of two ways. Either I go to bed early with every intention of magically making my body obey and go to bed, or I decide to stay up until my designated bed time. (The other alternative involves taking sleeping pills but I rarely do because I fear taking them with less than 8 hours set aside to sleep, and as someone with lots of things to do I just can't spend 8 hours of my day sleeping. There's no time. Plus most of them don't work.)
The first scenario plays out with me lying in bed and staring at the wall, the TV, reading, or doing nothing for hours, well past 2 AM. The doing nothing is because damn near everyone tries to say, "You're problem is you don't try to go to sleep. You shouldn't do other things; just lay in bed and sleep." Well, thank you, asshole, but if that really worked I wouldn't exactly have this problem, and go through the ensuing misery on purpose. Dick...
The second scenario involves me staying up till 2 AM, then either going to bed, in which case see scenario number one for the result, or realizing that my deadline has come and I'm still not tired. This is where my head starts doing some math to try and figure out exactly how long I've been awake, how many mandatory responsibilities I have the next day and thus how likely it is I can simply stay up for the entire time needed.
Another X-factor here is my boyfriend. (He's really my fiance, but I still feel a little weird calling him that. I think he drilled it in during the many years he feared making me think we might ever actually get married.) If he's been good at his only responsibility of sleeping all day long, he may have just woken up in which case I have my golden opportunity. I can stay up, hope for the best, and, in case I fall asleep too late, I can count on him to drag me by my ankles out of bed and sending me out to the world to accomplish said responsibilities.
If the boyfriend hasn't just woken up, I go about setting at least 7 alarms (I'm not exaggerating it really is at least 7) for 5 min time intervals around my goal wake up time, allowing for snooze. If he has I stay up intending to make it until a reasonable time in which the getting ready process will keep me up until I head out the door. Depending on when I woke up the previous day this often goes through without a hitch, I make it to my classes/work, come home exhausted, but all is well, I'm done, and now probably can't sleep.
Alternatively though, I run out of my lifeblood (caffeine) and/or have overshot my staying power without drastic measures [which are only called for in the case of REAL commitments with consequences like taking some big test (SAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT so on) or work (cuz there's no such thing as job security in retail and me likey money, incidentally so does my landlord)]. This ALWAYS happens literally an hour before I need to be up anyway. I have the glorious (and by glorious I mean retarded) idea of taking a "nap" and having my boyfriend wake me.
This is the a fore mentioned mistake that I repeatedly make and always ends badly, just sometimes when you're THAT tired it's hard to think clearly about how dumb this is and your brain supplants reason with "me likey sleepy." So when Erich (boyfriend) comes in to wake me up after roughly 45 min of sleep he is met with the angriest, incoherent little bitch you've ever seen.
It's seriously amazing how unbelievably pissy I am after less than an hour of sleep. If you have a cat you know most cats hate water. Imagine the way cats act when you try to submerge them in water only transformed into a human you're trying to pull out of bed. This is grossly exacerbated if you need to ask me any questions.
I simply don't have the mental capacity to understand what came out of your mouth while I'm still semi-sleeping, but I still try. Instead of succeeding I either say something that makes no sense, get unreasonably angry because you're not making any sense, or both. Particularly if I answered nonsense, which figuring out some nonsense to answer already pissed me off, then you ask "What does that mean?" which is another question AND requires that I remember the first question AND my nonsense answer AND how I meant the nonsense answer, which makes me downright pissed off at you.
After all this BS I wake up REALLY FUCKING ANGRY, and with 15 minutes to get where I need to be (makes me more angry). Now I'm a rushed little pissed-off ball of confusion and I look like a hot mess. You can see where this outrageously tired, mad, coffee-seeking disaster doesn't function well in class. It's ok though, because with the onset of tape recorders I've found: nap time = any time.
The resultant delirious day goes by and I plan to crash when I get home which is perfect because viola! I'm in bed early! Score! Not... I can't sleep more than 4 hours without actively trying so now I wake up between 5pm and midnight, which gives me better odds of staying up all night tomorrow.
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