I don’t feel well today. I didn’t even want to get out of my bed, but I pushed myself, forced myself to get dressed, just because I was awake, not because I felt like it. We often take the physical attributes of a situation, like time, and totally ignore the way we feel. Take meal times as an example, how many meals have you eaten because of the time of day, not because you were hungry? So there I was this morning, looking at a clock that said 7:35 am. I could have gone back to bed, the alarm wasn’t due to go for nearly an hour, but was there really any point in going back to sleep then? Was it going to be worth it? I think that I made the wrong choice, I chose to get up when going back to sleep for that one more hour, was what I really needed. I still can’t understand how I can get up, after ten and a half hours sleep, and still long, for that one more hour. What on earth has happened to me, that sleep is the one thing that I have now grown to hate, yet at the same time, yearn for more than anything. It feels like some kind of pariah, that lives in the middle of my life, clawing at me and always trying to drag me into its clutches. Sleep may well be my escape from pain, and everything that is happening in my life, but it has also become a prison that I just can’t escape.
I have this image of my future life where all I really do is sleep. A life where I wake to take my meds, to eat, to go to the loo, then, just go back to sleep. In fact, there are days right now, where I honestly believe that I could do just that, and do it without any great thought. If I didn’t have this, if I didn’t have the drive to keep writing, to keep active online, I would do just that. Crawl into bed and sleep. Today is one of those days, where I almost fear blinking, as I am sure that that second of darkness will be enough for it to win, that the balance would just shift. That I would land up sitting here in front of my PC, sleeping until my spine can’t hold me upright anymore, and my head drops slowly forwards until it finally crashes into my keyboard.
Life shouldn’t be like this, it shouldn’t be that you fight every second, just to stay awake. Every new day should be a joy, a place you enter with excitement, searching for those unique points that make it intriguing, that make it more special from the rest. I guess that’s the problem with routine, you know it is safe, you know that your day is protected, secure and somewhere you’re able to cope. You can’t have both. You can’t have the joys of the unknown because the unknown isn’t safe and mentally, that just freaks you out. So, life became safe, secure, always the same with just one highlight, the sleep that lets you escape. No, I can’t have both, it’s impossible as my health won’t let me.
I made the decision to change my routine this morning, I changed it by just 55 minutes, and now I am paying for them back. I got up early because going back to bed seemed pointless. Four hours on, I am still paying for them. My body is still craving those minutes of sleep that it missed. It sounds simple doesn’t it, just go to bed now. Go into the bedroom and get into bed and sleep, but of course it’s not. I would have to pay for that later, as I would then be out of routine again. The fluid lines of my daily routine, the step from one task to another, would then be broken and I would pay for that too. When I first brought routine into my life, it was my saviour. It gave me the structure that I needed, a mirror image of a work-life routine. It improved my life no end, I felt as though I once again was living, not drifting. Our perception of our own lives is so important, we all, ill or not, need to have that continuity with the outside world, even if we have nothing to do with it. What I didn’t allow for is my crazy brain, the one that can’t stand it if an ornament it out of place. What I didn’t expect, was that it would in time transfer that to every part of my life. That the majority of the time, I would land up feeling lost, under pressure and scared.
I knew from my past, that I get physically terrified by the unexpected, where continuity should exist. Having experienced total terror, when I arrived at work to find the layout of my office was unexpectedly changed overnight, I walked into a room I knew, but I felt like I had stepped into an alien planet. I was totally lost and totally terrified, unable to make my brain accept that they two places were the same, and unable to make sense of it. I had never felt anything like it, but that intense panic still haunts me to this day. 16 years on, and my brain is now bringing that terror, into my everyday life. Routine is becoming something I daren’t now change. It has been slowly building, increasing in it strength and determination to make me pay for even the slightest alteration. All it takes is for a problem to occur with my PC, or one of the sites that I use, and that terror starts to build. If I find myself running too far behind for comfort, again I find myself feeling scared. What of? I don’t really know. Getting up those few minutes early, was supposed to stop that happening today, but here I am, now fighting against what supposed to have made life easier. That panic is also the reason, that I now have to start preparing at least a week in advance if I know, I have to go to the hospital, or if someone is coming here. Interruption or not, that day still has to appear, as though nothing has changed, as though I have been sat here, just as I am now.
I can’t be sure, as I wasn’t in their minds, but the panic I have seen in the eyes of someone with dementia when they too are lost, looks just like the panic that I feel. I have only seen it a couple of times when I was visiting an old people’s home. I can still remember how terrified they looked, not just scared, but so lost, that it was hard to witness. The part of my brain that deals with all of this is slowly increasing its effect on my life. You can’t escape your own brain, you can’t manage what is unmanageable, all you can do is try to work with it, and hope that somehow along the line, you find the right balance. I guess, that is all any of us can do.
Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 20/04/2014 – I want me back
Two Rooms Plus Utilities 