Kissing Insomnia Goodbye

It’s like coming out of a fog.

After spending the last two or so months with extreme sleep deprivation, I’ve started sleeping again. That is something worth celebrating.

For the better part of the last few months, anything over four hours of consecutive sleep was a small miracle.

Nothing worked and it was a horrible cycle.

I’d turn my computer off and leave my blackberry on silent, soak my feet in warm water,  drink warm, caffeine-free tea, consume warm milk and honey and meditate (not all at the same time obviously, I’d either drown in the tea or the foot soak). I’d gently stretch, climb into bed, try to count downwards from 100, breathe deep and nothing.

Most nights I’d lie away thinking about what I needed to do the next day or what clothing I should wear for a run or whether or not I was happy and what I needed to make me happy.

Historically I sleep better when there is someone around. The situation was getting so dire that I enlisted a single, plutonic male friend to climb into bed with me. All that did was make me cranky, as I listened to him sleep. And I think it is poor form to push someone out of bed for sleeping, especially after inviting them there to sleep.

As time went on I was more and more exhausted, yet more and more perky and upbeat in public. It was virtually impossible to slow down, let alone sleep.

I’d lie awake being angry at the fact that I wasn’t sleeping, which would just make me less able to sleep.

Then on Monday I hit a wall, the 16-hour work days, being on-call 24/7 and not sleeping, caught up with me. In place of a normal conversation with another manager, my eyes started watering and before I knew it I was crying.

It was embarrassing, but apparently all I needed. I headed home for a nap, then that night I slept.

It’s a bit of a fragile peace right now, that’s why the posts are few and far between. If I feel tired when I get home, I try to give my computer a wide-berth.

However, as I start to catch up on a two-month backlog of rest, I’ll start posting more … in theory. I still work the stupidly long hours, so time is at a premium, but I’ll try.

 

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Is it really better?

Whoever said ‘it is better to have loved and lost than never of loved at all,’ was lying. That person has either never lost or never loved.

The great purge took place the other day.

It only took about an hour and two and a half glasses of wine.

I was pretty drunk by the end, but everything from his baseball cap to books that might remind me of him, was moved to a box.

I decided, at the strong suggestion of my best friend, not to purge by building a giant bonfire. Not only does a fire decrease the chances of getting my apartment’s damage deposit back, but she told me she regrets not being able to look through the mementos of past loves.

The last step was moving all of the emails, photos and music from our relationship and burning it to DVD.

With that finished I popped out the completed DVD and shut off my computer

I survived the purge, but as I learned the next morning my computer did not.

It appears when I deleted all trace of the man I loved from my computer, it killed it — yes, it is quite possible my computer died of a broken heart. #fml

 

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