Spoiled Only Child

Regrouping

So, 35, it's not going well so far. Yesterday was my birthday, a day of slate gray skies, unrelenting rain and an ominous feeling of perpetual evening. I was tired from a night of poor sleep. Yes, of course, I couldn't sleep. The night before Thanksgiving, the night before my birthday, any day that I would really like to have fun on, the sleep gremlin comes and smacks me down, teaches me a lesson about anticipation and the silliness of our mortal plans. I had the day off from work, and I had that feeling of being uncomfortable, not sure what to do with myself, wondering what better thing I might have been doing. Food didn't taste good. The sore throat lingered, edging closer and closer to the cold. My parents had arrived in town to find a broken heater in their condo, the very heater that they spent their entire last visit (and their savings account) having fixed. In the afternoon, I was driving up an exit ramp and had to slam on the brakes as someone was coming down it in the wrong direction. We just avoided a head-on collision. And then my parents got a call. Their brother in law had died suddenly. Heart attack. Fell right out of his deer stand in the woods, dead.

I went to bed unsure if or when they were leaving for the funeral, cutting short this long-anticipated visit with Mia and forcing us to cancel our child-free weekend in Charleston. We had already paid a one-night deposit on our hotel, and it seemed unlikely that we would get it back. Plus, I have six days off from work, and instead of spending them visiting with my parents and drinking martinis in Charleston, it appeared that I would spend it at home with a cold and a panicky feeling in my chest. And can you guess what happened when I tried to go to sleep last night? I spent much of the night fighting off panic. Something about that day came together to make me feel absolutely terrified. It felt like a message from the universe that, no, life is not fun. Life is unforeseen tragedies and dashed expectations. It is a hopeless game of trying to veer out of the way of disaster. A game that, in the end, we all lose. My usual meditation couldn't calm my sweating body. I had been so tired all day, and yet sleep would not come. And then the visions of another exhausted day reared up, adding to the misery.

Now here I am. The sun is shining again and the panic has receded. This morning, it was officially decided that my parents are leaving, and we canceled our Charleston reservations for a $50 fee. Yes, I'm still a bit sad about the week I had planned. But at least nothing is up in the air. That feels immensely better. And, actually, I am relieved not to have to go on a romantic getaway with a cold and a killer case of insomnia. I think I'll take this time to regroup, get my worldview back in order. Lately, it feels like there is so much fear in me. A fear that, until recently, I never even knew existed. And I am fighting it, fearing the fear, rather than simply looking at it with an open heart. No, nothing turns out how we plan, everything is out of our control, death can snatch us at any moment. But in between all that, there is joy. There is love and beauty and laughter. There are mountaintops and sparkling lakes and crisp fall afternoons at the park with an ebullient 4-year-old. All of it together, it is life, and I want to open myself to it all. Because trying to fight off the bad parts? That is one battle I am sure to lose.

Now I can't give up on this

I haven't written about my insomnia in ages. I guess it has receded into the background buzz of life. I'm used to it now. But I also haven't written about it because I kind of gave up on the idea of getting off sleeping pills. About six months ago, I just felt I couldn't deal with worrying every night whether I would sleep. I didn't really make a decision, I just took it every night, always thinking, "Just this one more night, and then I'll start cutting back again." I took the more expensive kind when I had free samples, and the cheaper kind when I didn't. And even with the sleeping pills, there were still occasional nights when I couldn't sleep. So I would take more. And then, for my big beach vacation, I was really nervous because it was my big vacation last year when this whole insomnia thing started. So I took some of both, together, and boy did that do the job. I loved that feeling of being completely overtaken by it, of falling into a heavy and uninterrupted sleep. And then I came home, and I realized, if I just take some of both, I really won't have to worry at all. Temptation. And then one night a few weeks ago, even my miracle mixture didn't work. I think that should have been a sign, although I don't know that I heeded it, that taking more and more drugs to get to sleep might not be a good long-term plan.

Around the beginning of this month, I started to feel depressed. Like, checklist of all the symptoms of depression you find on the internet kind of depressed. I didn't enjoy my normal pursuits, not even cooking or eating. (Extremely abnormal for me.) I felt a kind of generalized sadness and anxiety all the time. Communication with others became a misery. I felt uncomfortable, restless, trapped in a world that no longer looked the same. I actually had to run out of a grocery store one day because I felt like I was freaking out. It was scary. I couldn't write about it. I couldn't describe it. I just found a draft post I wrote during that time, and I couldn't publish it. And then something said to me, "It might be those sleeping pills." And I looked them up and, sure enough, both of them listed depression and anxiety as possible side effects. Now, who knows, maybe mixing them together triggered something. Or maybe they had nothing to do with it. But, suddenly, I saw the insanity of taking this cocktail of drugs to sleep every night for months or years on end. Who knows what this stuff could do to me.

So I am newly resolved to get off sleeping pills. And somehow it feels different this time. I don't relish the idea of not sleeping, but I don't feel the panic about it that I used to feel. Maybe I've had time to come to terms with the fact that this is part of my life now. I'm never going to snap back to being the person before insomnia. This is not something that I'm going to "conquer" or "leave behind." It's something I have to live with. I also think it's something that has prompted me to live more skillfully. It inspired me to start meditating, a practice that has given me mental discipline. I no longer lie down with an anxious cycle of thoughts running through my head. (It used to go something like, What should I think about? How can I distract myself? What if I don't fall asleep? No! Don't think about that. Don't! Oh shit. It's happening again. FUCK!!! MY LIFE IS RUINED!!!) I know how to feel my breath and defuse unproductive, fearful thoughts. I know how to focus on what is here and now and say to myself, "I'm aware of the fear. I smile to the fear." I am stunned at how calming that is, to just sit quietly and feel the weight in my chest, acknowledge it, defuse its power.

This is not to say I have it all figured out. I still haven't slept a night without sleeping pills. I've quit taking the expensive stuff, and I am down to half a tablet of the cheap stuff. As soon as I can work up the courage, I'm going to go down to a quarter. Maybe tonight? I am still afraid, but I think the consequences of not doing this could be greater than I am willing to bear.

Words from my dark place

Maybe if I can just slap some words over all this dread and fear, it would help. So even though I feel like I can't do it, I'm going to try.

Things I am afraid of:

• That working here is going to drive me crazy. I feel crazy right now, I really do.
• That I'm going to be laid off.
• That I'm never going to find another job. 
• That I am absolutely, positively, unemployable outside of this place.
• That, without my income, we will have to sell our house.
• That I live in a world that no longer has any use for people like me.
• That I am lost, and I will never find my way.
• That our country, our economy, our world are broken beyond repair.
• That I'm not going to sleep tonight.
• That I am depressed.
• That I am headed for some kind of mental breakdown.
• That I am ruining other people's lives with my anxiety and depression and insomnia.

Things I need to remember:

• That, unlike many of the people on this sinking ship of a company, my husband has a good job that will allow us to live a good, middle-class life even if I lose my job. (No, we probably can't afford our house without some kind of income from me, but we won't starve or have to move to the projects.)
• That the economy will get better one day.
• That this situation is temporary. Someday, somehow, I will find my way out of this stuck place.
• That I am valuable.
• That my situation is only intolerable inside my own head. In every rational respect, I am perfectly OK.

Last night, I hardly slept. I'm working the fucking night-shift this week--I now have to do it one out of every nine weeks--and it's got my very delicate sleep schedule out of whack. And I lay there in the dark feeling like my chest was squeezing, crumpling. And I kept thinking, I'm stuck in a work situation that is intolerable. I can't stand it anymore. And there's no way out. None of the masses of people that our company has laid off this year have found full-time work in this area. Not a single one. So I am trapped working at this place that is making me crazy. I'm not emotionally capable of continuing to work there, but I have no choice. I felt like I was going to die or go nuts or I don't even know what.

Today, I came to work and our boss told us that it's looking like we're going to have to make lots more severe cuts next year. He told us all to start getting prepared. The tone of his voice and the look in his eye said, "We are fucked. We are hanging on by a thread. There is no hope." I'm not sure what preparations I'm supposed to be making. I feel overwhelmed, powerless, lost, adrift in an endless ocean. I know that someday I will look back and see how close I was to shore, how everything really was OK. That I had my family and my health and my (relative) youth and all the things that really mattered. But right now I can't see it. I can't see the horizon from here, and I am scared.

I need to focus on what's right here and now. Telling myself stories about a better future is not going to help. Right now, I have air to breathe and food to eat. Right now, I have a steady income. Right now, I have a beautiful, happy daughter. Right now, I have a husband who loves me. Right now, I have lots of vacation time. Right now, I get to go home every night to my family. Right now, I am healthy. Right now, there is a beer in the refrigerator waiting for me. Right now, I am going to leave work and go home and try to breathe.

One of those days

Today I am full of fear. No particular tragedy has befallen me; it's just that some days the vulnerability of being alive comes to rest on my shoulders and I am trapped. It started two nights ago, when I woke from a nightmare that my mother had been diagnosed with some kind of terminal brain disease. The fear of that dream stayed with me through the day, infusing everything (including Mia's school dropoff) with a sense of doom. I had hoped that today would be a fresh start, but instead I woke at 5 a.m. to go to the bathroom and was gripped by the fear that my mother is going to die. It spiraled outward from there. What will her death do to Mia? And maybe I've made the wrong choice not to give Mia a sibling, because all the people who love her are OLD and they're all going to DIE and what if she ends up all ALONE? Maybe I could talk to her older half-brothers, ask them to befriend her if this happens. Can she ever be close to them with such a huge age difference? I eventually fell back into a fitful sleep, from which I woke tired and full of a sort of generalized dread. And here I am.

Lately, I feel completely raw, open to the world. In one sense it is joyful, but in another it is terrifying. When you are aware that anything could happen at any moment, that you control none of it, it makes you look at things differently. Sometimes, it leads my mind down a dark path. I'm hoping I'll break into a clearing soon.

Lower the stakes

Oh, hell. There are so many things I want to post here. But it seems I never even have 15 minutes of free time anymore to sit and collect my thoughts. Mia demands every second of my attention when I am with her, every millisecond of it, to the point where I sometimes feel I am in prison. She is an amazingly sadistic jailer. And then there is my damned job I have to do, and the chores, the meditation attempts, the trips to the gym. And always, always, the dinner, the dishes and the grocery shopping. I love to cook, but sometimes it feels like keeping ourselves fed is an endless grind. On top of it all is the Spanish class I'm starting this week, and the applying for jobs (yes, I'm at it again), and the developing of business plans, and then becoming discouraged about said business plans, and the wasting time on the computer. Oh, and the time spent worrying about whether I'll sleep at night. That's a lot of time these days, a lot.

Years ago, it feels like, I was planning to write this post called "Overcoming Insomnia." That was probably more than a month ago, when I slept for 12 straight nights without any pharmaceutical aids, and I thought I had a shot at sleeping like a normal person again. But that is behind me now, so far behind me. And the idea that I ever thought I could give advice about coping with insomnia is laughable. But, BUT, maybe writing some of that stuff down would help me remember it. Maybe I should give myself a little talking to. So here goes, in the brief stolen moments I have right now.

The other night, as the old nighttime anxiety crept in, these words flashed into my brain and took hold: Lower the stakes. Lower the stakes! When I am in a bad stretch, it feels as if not sleeping is the end of the world. It means that my life is ruined, all of it, that I am officially damaged, broken, living a life that is not the one I wanted. "It's like having a chronic disease," I tell myself, "having to feel like shit from lack of sleep several days a week. This is as bad as cancer. I might as well go ahead and die!!!" But with those words — lower the stakes — I felt a flash of reason creeping in. What does it mean to get a crappy night's sleep? This is not life or death stuff. It's just one day of feeling tired. It's not that big a deal, forgodssake. Get a grip.

I have survived many tired days before, and most of them aren't even necessarily worse than well-rested days. On tired days, I don't allow myself to stress about my larger goals. I don't tend to fall into funks about the meaning of life. I focus on accomplishing the necessary tasks, and I am often rather productive, because I become a sort of cheerleader for myself. Anything I do is a victory on tired days. And the feeling I get in the evening, when I have made it through, when I know I've done it, is close to bliss.

I also need to get out of the rigid mindset of "must sleep from 11:30 to 7:30." If I am awake during that time, I make it a misery for myself, worrying about how many hours are left, how tired I will be the next day. Instead, I should be thankful, for a bit of the alone time I crave during my busy days, for time to read a book, to write on this blog, to sit quietly in the dark and breathe. Yes, there may be a small price to pay the next day, the no-sleep headache and the heavy tired body, but if I play my cards right, I could make my wakeful night hours a lovely time that is worth the sacrifice.

And lastly, there is always the sleeping pill. I need to lower the stakes on that too. If I need them to avoid getting into a crazy cycle of not sleeping for days, I have them. I have gotten myself into this stressed out cycle of worrying about their cost, and telling myself that I cannot take them, and then freaking out about the idea of not being able to sleep without them, and then freaking out because I cannot afford them... It goes on and on. But the fact is, even if the only option is to buy them at full price (and that's not the only option) and take them every single night, it's $75 a month. No, I don't want to spend $75 a month on fucking sleeping pills. But if I have to, I can. It's just $75 a month. That figure feels so much less powerful when I see it on the page. It is not a number worth sitting up nights worrying about.

I've always thought of my life as completely linear. This moment leads to the next, and so we spend every moment worrying about the next, until all our moments have passed us by. Really, it's all just a succession of moments. And we can choose to embrace them for what they are — to accept that there will always be problems, that things are not supposed to be be any certain way — or we can spend them wishing for some mythical existence in which everything is as we want it to be. When I put it like that, the choice seems obvious. I choose to lower the stakes.

Midnight rambler

I've been plotting this post in which I say, Guess what???!!! I've slept without a sleeping pill for an entire week! I am finally putting that little insomnia incident behind me. Yes, it took eight months, but I am no pussy. I was not going to let that shit beat me. I win! I am woman, hear me roar! ...

But I made it to four nights, and now here I am on the couch. It's night two of not sleeping and, after tossing and turning for long enough that I could tell it wasn't going to happen, taking the damned pill. Sigh. I had pretty much decided that, if I needed a little pill with no side effects to sleep normally, that there really were much bigger problems in life. I was just going to accept it. But then, after a couple months of getting by on my doctor's generous bags of free samples, I went to the pharmacy to fill the prescription for the new pills she put me on. And it was $50 for 20 pills. That works out to $2.50 a day. No fucking way. So my resolve to get off them was renewed. And I've done surprisingly well. Until the past couple nights, when I am back to my old tricks again. Very disappointing, but I should not be worrying about it because...

I gave up worrying for lent. I wasn't going to give up anything this year, but then I was on facebook and I happened to see a comment from a guy who said he was giving up paying the mortgage and going to work. Obviously, that was a joke, but it inspired me to quip back. "Great idea, I think I'll give up worrying." And then I was struck by a bolt of lightning. What if I really did give up worrying for lent? Of course, a life without worry is impossible. But what if you just gave yourself permission not to do it for a set period of time? Anything stressful happens and you just say, well, fuck it, I'm not allowed to worry right now. And maybe I finish lent with the realization that worry has been accomplishing nothing in my life, that I can let go of it and still function in the world. That I can have a problem, and I can seek a solution to that problem, without obsessively worrying over it.

I think we all (or at least I) go around with the impression that worry is somehow necessary to life, that it  keeps you safe and keeps you moving and looking for solutions. I mean, only acid-crazed hippies who live on the beach and root through dumpsters for food don't worry, right? Worry is what separates us from the apes — and the losers. But I think the reality is that all it does is weigh us down. I can not sleep and piss and moan and work myself into a state about how tired I'm going to be tomorrow. Or I can just sit here quietly and say, well, my body doesn't want to sleep. So let's write that rambling nonsensical blog post I've been meaning to put up. So I have a chronic insomnia problem. So fucking what. More time for reading, writing bullshit on the internet, medidating. Ha! Take that, insomnia.

Obviously, I'm not achieving my goal entirely because I would probably be sleeping right now if I hadn't allowed worries about whether I was going to be able to sleep to creep in. But I'm doing my best. And tomorrow, I plan to have a little ceremony wherein I release my worries to the universe, and I'm planning to write about it here and even include a photograph (my first blog photograph!) of my silly little ritual. But it's only silly if you believe it is, so I think I'll call it a Profound and Life Changing Ritual.

OK, this is becoming less coherent by the minute so I'm going to cut it off here. It is paining me not to have a pithy ending, but the harder I try for one the more addled I begin to sound. So I ... (gets pulled offstage by giant hook.)

Sleep, I will never take you for granted. Just come back to me.

I was so excited to leave my shitty week behind and have a lovely fall weekend. Haven't I learned by now that anticipation is a curse? For the past three nights, my old friend insomnia has returned, and getting to sleep has involved about three hours of tossing and turning and fast heartbeats and angry thoughts and, one night, uncontrollable crying. All I want is to lie down and sleep and wake up rested, rather than waking up anxious about another tired day, fighting a headache and having to gulp down coffee and push myself to even move. This is not how it's supposed to be!

I lie there in the night telling myself that non-resistance is the key to happiness, that I must accept what is, that I need to make a friend of the present moment, in which I am safe and warm, even if I am not sleeping —— and then, FUCK!!! WHY CAN'T I JUST FUCKING GO TO SLEEP??? I DON'T WANT TO BE TIRED AGAIN. THIS SHOULDN'T BE HAPPENING. WHY ME????? FUCK!!!!!! Nothing more fun than a night of battling back despair. What makes this most disappointing is that I had been weaning myself off of sleeping medication for weeks. I had been on a very low dose and had even done my first night of no medication, and things were going great. And now it feels like I am starting over. Why doesn't my body let me sleep anymore?

Despite my fatigue, I was insistent on carrying out my plan to take Mia to the pumpkin farm yesterday. Insomnia or no, we were not going to miss out on fall fun. Well, we drove an hour and spent $30 on admission to the pumpkin "farm," which was a cheesy crowded hellhole with paved pathways and some store-bought pumpkins thrown in the grass and people carrying inflatable prizes and eating over-priced funnel cakes and fast food and a pond whose water was actually dyed blue. Who do they think they are fooling? This is the pumpkin "farm" where everyone around here goes. What the fuck is wrong with people? Never again. As we got in the car and left, Mia said, "That didn't feel fun." Probably because we spent more time waiting in line than anything else.

But we did have a lovely family dinner last night, and we took a bike ride this morning and ate lunch on the porch and it is a beautiful fall day and, if I can get my act together, we're going to have this for dinner.

Update

I quit the sleeping pills, slept great for a week — with husband on the couch. Started to feel confident. Nervousness about bedtime virtually disappeared. Had such hopes that this little insomnia chapter was coming to a close. Invited husband back to bed. Screwed again. It's become some kind of horrible cycle in which I fear not being able to sleep with him and then, because of the fear, I can't sleep. I feel myself start to fall asleep, and then I jerk awake. Immediately, my heart starts to pound and then it's over. No sleep for me until one of us leaves the bed and I get myself calmed down again, which sometimes takes hours. There are no words to describe how utterly sick I am of this insomnia drama.

Husband, understandably, is starting to feel that this is a sign of some deeper problem in our marriage. I think he feels rejected and, in his shoes, I probably would too. All I can say is that if I'm not sleeping because of some concern about our marriage, that concern is entirely on a subconscious level. I don't know what it is. I am as baffled as he is. I have googled and googled, trying to find someone else who slept peacefully with a partner for years and now just simply cannot. I find nothing but a bunch of testimonials from people who are thrilled to be sleeping in separate rooms from their spouses. Sleeping in separate beds is not a long-term option for us — it's just not, end of discussion — so I guess I'll do another couple weeks on the sleeping pills and hope that I can ease back into sleeping with him drug-free. A couple days ago I was so happy to be sleeping drug free and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Now I'm tired and headachey for another day and feel like I'm starting over. I just cannot get past this last hurdle.

Meanwhile, I feel as if I've fallen into a boring holding pattern. I go to work, come home, cook dinner, get Mia to bed, watch TV and then go to bed. I feel the urge for some new pursuits — volunteering to help a refugee family and learning Spanish are the two things that come to mind — but all my energy is going into the nightly pursuit of sleep. There is nothing left over. I don't even have the mental energy to knit. I have an intense desire to just veg, to do nothing. I end up spending hours playing online solitaire. How pathetic is that?

I want to write something cheerful and upbeat here. But that doesn't seem to be where I am right now. Sorry for being such a whiner.

Gone round the bend

It seems I have an anxiety problem. For the past several days, I've been walking around with a weight on my chest, an actual physical sensation of pain just between my breasts. I cannot wear underwire bras because they push on that spot and drive me even more insane than I already am. Through an elaborate ritual of warm bath, warm milk, breathing exercises and having Mr. SOC sleep on the couch, I was able to get two fairly normal nights of sleep. But last night, after attempting to return to my standard bedtime routine, I again found myself staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, my heart pounding and my mind racing, trying and failing to focus on my breathing and calm myself down. I have had to take anxiety medicine five of the last eight nights.

I have been baffled by this sudden change in my mental health. The feelings of anxiety are not related to anything that is happening in the moment. I don't even feel stressed out. I just can't get this weight on my chest to lift, and I can't get to sleep at night. The obvious stress in my life has been the impending layoffs. But they are done, and I'm not among the laid off, so why am I freaking out now? I am beginning to recognize that my anxiety stems from feeling out of control of my own life. I have been trying to change my job situation for a year and a half now. And I have been unable to do it. Just recently, the place that I  thought was finally going to be my golden opportunity pulled the rug out from under me. It felt as if my last hope was gone. That I was at the end of the road. That I had officially failed in my job search and that there was nowhere to go from here.

In essence, I have been trying for a year and a half to figure out a new career path for myself, and I haven't been able to do it. I haven't come up with any brilliant ideas or novel plans. I haven't been innovative. I have simply applied for a bunch of jobs in a similar field to where I already work and been rejected, over and over. In all this time, I have made approximately zero progress toward my goal, and I don't know what I need to do to change that. Almost daily, I get into some negative thought pattern related to this. I have failed because I'm not brave enough, or not smart enough, or not ambitious enough, or simply not good enough in a million different ways, my brain tells me. If I'm in the next round of layoffs, no one else will want me. My life up to this point has landed me nowhere. Everyone I meet has accomplished more than I have. I suck compared to them. No one even likes me. I have no friends. I am a complete fucking failure. Hmmm, I wonder, is walking around with that voice in my head stressing me out a little? You think?

Here's the truth about my situation, the one I need to burn into my brain, tattoo on my chest, inject into my bloodstream. All the gloom and negativity is in my head. This is all a matter of perception. In the scale of human problems, mine are tiny. I have a lovely home, a good marriage, a beautiful healthy child, a solidly middle-class income. And I have a job that allows me to do important work that makes a contribution to my community. I'm fine. My life is fine. I'm raising my child, cooking good meals, taking vacations, doing good work, generally being a solid upstanding person and trying my best. Yeah, sometimes I'm watching Netflix on the couch rather than saving the world or taking my life in creative new directions. But give me a break, will you? What I need is to stop beating myself up. What I need is to get a little perspective here. I'm trying my damndest, because I really want to sleep tonight and this sensation in my chest is really fucking annoying.