Recently, I suffered a bout of my own brand of insomnia. Most people who have insomnia, from what I understand, can't fall asleep.....they lay awake in bed, tossing and turning, counting sheep, whatever, but their mind won't "shut off." I've had that too, it's painful, but I've mostly solved that, the culprits are usually cuz I drank too much caffeine too close to bed time, I'm still hungry, or I'm too excited, or something's too loud. No, the Robert "Insane Insomnia" that I suffered for about a week allowed me to get to sleep just fine, in the usual 2-5 minute time span, but then, like a few hours in, WAY before I'm ready to wake up, I wake up HUNGRY. Like really starving, and my hunger is doing somersaults in my belly begging for more food. And my body is sweating like it's used up all the food it can and has no more fuel to burn. I then eat a little food to try to get myself to go back to sleep, like an egg or something, go back to bed, can't sleep, still feel hungry, get a little more to eat, rinse and repeat, until I've lost an hour or two, and it's only a few hours til it's time to wake up, and I finally fall asleep after giving in to the hunger and suspending my diet by eating like a whole can of sardines or something (MJ and I sometimes run out of ready-made food) only to wake up an hour and a half later not feeling my normal refreshed self.
The results of this insane insomnia, as I'm calling it, because it drove me crazy trying to eat more food and sacrificing my waistline but also not getting enough sleep and sacrificing my deep REM sleep......is a week of feeling groggy during the day, feeling like I needed to sleep but couldn't, waking up at random times feeling frustrated (NOT again!) and wanting to punch the pillow, drenching the bedsheets from the sweat (catastrophic for MJ), feeling grouchy all the time cuz sleep is related to emotional state and almost every brain function, not having a "fresh brain" for work or studying, AND on top of that still gaining weight cuz I'm eating a lot at night and then not getting the usual sleep time to let that food digest it off. One of the worst negative cycles I've experienced.
Basically, good practice for the first few years of parenthood I guess.
I looked for causes of this constant sleep thing, including PARASITES.....I really was afraid I developed a bug or worm or something in my stomach that ate all my food and made me hungry.
And then......one day, about a week in........it ended. I had a great night's sleep, went all the way through, dreamed my happy dreams (The real emotions I feel in dreams and how vivid they are for me where I don't feel like anything else exists makes me wonder more and more about Elon Musk saying our world is a simulation, and maybe that's real). Yay! I'm going to go to sleep now feeling grateful I got my sleep back. Hurray!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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