My Sleep is so Effed

I can go to sleep eventually, actually pretty quickly most times, so then I sleep for 2 to 4 to 6 hours, and I never know which one I’ll get.

I struggle to go back to sleep more than usually going to sleep is, any person or animal (cats) will interrupt my “Go back to sleep” and so I lay awake for hours, or think I do, but it’s horrible sleep awake dreaming more times than not.

Sometimes I am actually awake and that is what is worse, I can’t get the right things to line up and so I turn on something too familiar on my big screen, and hope it will lull me to sleep. For a long time it’s either Pride & Prejudiced (1996) or if a very long bad time where I actually feel way worse than my usual worse I put on one of the Star Trek shows (1966, 1987, 1993, 1995, 2001.)

One thing I have, is my tablet usually playing music under my pillow.

ADHD brain really struggles to sleep without something to focus on and slip away.

My brain is too active to use itself as a focus for sleep thing. I’ll go deep and wide and amuse myself all night. Or yell at myself, or replay interactions, just rumination of the worst thing for sleep.

Music is my external choice of first line defense. I can lock into it and drift off sooner than later usually, but the ADHD brain is too easy to be distracted so that doesn’t always work.

If I do use my big screen, for night I keep the display settings on full night mode, and don’t put my Emby app full size, I keep it floating on the left and a time module on the right. I then keep the volume very low, so most talk is almost not legible, but with my ADHD, when zoning into it with my focus, I can hear it just fine, not too loud, just right.

I’m trying to use the least amount of light. My background is black.

I use an eye mask, I have a hard time sleeping without one. In the old days I hadn’t met an eye mask I could stand using. I got one with a heater in it a few years ago and even when not charged I like the weight and blackout-ness of it. I have a light weight silk one that works in the summer fine.

When I didn’t have eye masks I slept with my right arm over my eyes. I couldn’t sleep with any light in the room, except for red lights. Most devices sit dormant with white or blue light and in darkness they are HUGE.

So nowadays I sleep in my office, with my cat. I would do better if she didn’t want to sleep on me. She distract me, awakes me all night at any point.

Like one time I got up last night, used the bathroom, and came back, got as comfortable as I could and was slipping away and pounce, mmmmrrrwow. I startled awake. It was so jarring. I super struggled after that event.

I was a night owl most of my life. I wouldn’t even attempt to go to bed until after 2am most of the time. Since menopause things have gotten different and worse. I had to sleep more when perimenopause starting and seriously HAD to get 11 hours of sleep or else feel like crap all day. I would stay up to 11 pm and that would do me in for the next day.

So I was sleeping from 8:30pm to 7 am at least.

Then I started sleeping a bit less and getting up at 5am religiously without trying. And in this miserable existence (I am not a morning person) the day was so long. Too long. Stress increased with family and then Covid year hit. We got something at the end of that year, it was probably Covid. I got so sick and my guts got way worse and I just couldn’t live without feeling it for weeks and weeks, maybe until March, I wasn’t back to myself, and so yeah, Covid made me worse.

That was so bad. I woke up Christmas morning like death warmed over. Out of the blue so sick, and just so sick.

So my sleep wasn’t working for so many years, not refreshing a lot of the time.

I try, try, try and now it’s like my body is in a super flare of Fibromyalgia and all along I had it. I had it when I was younger and just dealt with it, oh so achy and pain, but sleep at least worked for helping and once Ibuprofen went over the counter it was my achy bedtime aide.

When I was younger, I didn’t know what was wrong and Fibro was not well researched yet. Neither was female ADHD or AuDHD for that matter. I just dealt with it wondering why I was normal but very un-normal … I could do stuff, and get miserable the more I did, but then I was ok after a day or so, pain in my arm from nothing and feet and junk after junk, allergies getting worse since I was 13 years old. Quirkyness and ADHD I knew I was weird, but cool in the 80’s but then in the 90’s I found the book Driven to Distraction and felt good to feel that I was actually ADHD, but it didn’t fully describe me still. Just found out in the last few years that I am Autistic too so AuDHD. My ADHD has always been my main self, and the Au is also me but morely my home or when I’m sick or bothered or whatever. That was the side of me that I didn’t understand at all. So it was all very tiring for me. And having really tight muscles and if I had my husband massage my shoulders or back I would hurt so much there for DAYS after. That was when I was in the 20’s and 30’s.

Shopping for groceries was Whole Foods, Costco, Publix … all one day. For years these traveling things made me have a bad day after. Holiday cooking, have a bad day or two after. Then, in my 50’s it got so much worse. Costco visit only, 3 days to recover.

I started taking Astaxantin then and it really helped. More resilient than not. This now was after Covid. Then we took in the two cats, we named them Lottie and Maya. That made 7 cats inside. Lottie is my cat, or rather I am her person.

That happened within a few months of them coming into our home.

I have slept in the living room many times over the years, I didn’t like our bedroom the bed or it’s position one had to sleep in. In my office I sleep on my futon in couch position, and if I would ever be able to put it down into bed position I would still sleep in the same position. Our house is sitting NNW if looking out of the house so sleeping with feet pointing at NNW (or northish) or SSE (or southish) is fine, NNW is base.

Bedroom is feet facing WSW ( or Westish) … UGH. I hate that.

We had put the bed in front of the windows, that is the correct place for my sleeping. But it’s not good for the room. Another place is put the bed opposite (flipped) and that is better than base in the bedroom but still very awkward for the room.

I just sleep by myself better, and that is that. I hear my husbands heart beating and it flips my brain on. Or he flops over or puts a hand on me and that is it. Bye. Couch.

So when I finally had a good space for my office I slept there happily, but then the cat messed it up. I love her, it’s not a personal affront to her to say she messes up my sleep. It’s simply just that I sleep alone better.

But it just goes down to say, restorative sleep is hard to find.

One day in these past few years I remember waking up and saying “I feel brand new!” What a feeling! I don’t know this at all now. Or before then. So that brand new feeling happened and within 20 minutes this awful overwhelmed sensitives and aches and miseries and pain and brain fog and migraines just washed over me and my new self was overwrought again.

So last night wasn’t good, I felt horrible and I got up right before 6am. Made toast and some milk then couldn’t take it anymore and went back to sleep, awoke after 9am. Migraine. Thanks sleep. Every day lately.

I usually take Ibuprofen in the morning lately but didn’t today. I knew it’s better to find migraine and at least ply it with Excedrin.

So I do use Magnesium some, I love Magnesium since I discovered it really, really helps me. But that is before. It’s like all the stress of living right now is all that matters. Nothing will go right.

So sleep is ugh, I think too much, dream too much and my working memory isn’t cleared.

If I watch new shows, I have them in my brain taking over everything. Damn. I have to squeeze my thoughts to cook something or do something, like writing this.

Go away puppets from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

At least that’s better than the horror episode.

I had been watching The Big C on Netflix, but stopped because all I could think of is relationship problems and cancer.