Sleepy Time Gal

Sleep and I have a love/hate relationship.

On the one hand, it's always felt like an enormous waste of time to me, and I resent having to cut short my days by going to bed when I could be doing any of a million other things that would be more fun or interesting. I've had trouble falling asleep since I was a little girl, and I'm a light sleeper and wake easily in the night. Then I have trouble getting back to sleep. I can rarely sleep on planes or in other conveyances, and conditions have to be just right for me to fall asleep in the first place. Morning light and noises creep into my consciousness and even pillows over my head can only help me so much when I try to sleep in past dawn to make up for the insomnia of the previous night. Sleeping is fraught with a lot of frustration and irritation for me.

On the other hand, without good, regular, deep sleep, I feel awful. Giving birth, while the hardest thing I've ever done, was less physically overwhelming and difficult than the three years of chronic sleep deprivation I suffered after my daughter (also a poor sleeper) was born. Normally an energetic person, when I'm sleep-deprived I feel lackluster and without drive, and the headaches I'm already prone to settle on me more often and for longer periods. They wake me and won't let me sleep, but, cruelly, they require sleep to go away. Once one of my frequent headaches turns into a full-blown migraine, no medicine can dull the pain or make it stop. The only thing that will cure a migraine for me is sleep, but the misery of the migraines pushes sleep out of reach. Then, for the hours until I am exhausted and depleted enough to doze off, all I can do is writhe and whimper and, occasionally, vomit, until I can coax Morpheus close enough to whisper in my ear and let me doze. Only then can I make the nausea-inducing jackhammer in my head desist, or at least decrease the decibel level for a while.

I've been frustrated not to have kept up my blog for so many weeks, but trying to work around loved ones' conflicting sleep schedules in order to have time to talk with them or help them out late at night or early in the morning, when they're free, and feeling always sleep deprived for months on end has meant I've felt less sharp, less productive, frustratingly behind in many projects. My various ideas for essays all felt uninspiring and not worth the hours they take to write because my fatigue makes everything feel like a bigger effort with less reward at the end of it. I feel like I've been grasping at sleep and just missing it, catching only a few feathers in my hand when I try to hold onto it. When I have time to get a big gulp of sleep and can finally catch up, I feel wonderful and run around happily, making the most of it, but my schedule hasn't let me carry that feeling for more than a day or two before I again fall into a series of sleep-deprived days and nights that make me anxious and angry at my body's inability to relax. And lying in bed, exhausted and headachey and mad at myself for not being asleep, does not make me feel sleepier.

I've made pacts with myself to get to bed earlier and get into sleep-friendly habits, and when this school holiday ends, I'm determined to again give this my best effort. But the rush and bustle of holiday preparations has upended my plans and the sleep-deprived slog through the fog continues. I've been going to bed very late, waking in the middle of the night and again early in the morning, fighting headaches and fatigue day after day. I've been feeling ever more frustrated during what was supposed to have been a week in which I could catch up on some lost sleep and reset my broken body clock while having fun relaxing with people dear to me. Hard as I've worked to be ready for this holiday season, I still haven't sent out holiday cards or responded to letters or e-mails. Fatigue makes communication take twice the effort it usually does.

Much as I love Christmas, when I think of how I've actually spent past Christmases, I realize how many of them have found me feeling exhausted, sick with colds, headachey, ill with chronic stomach problems, or completely sidelined with migraines. Somehow every year I overplan and undersleep and again realize, oh yeah, the holidays make me sick! Of course, the problem is not with a Christmas virus or New Year's infection; I just push myself too hard and hold my expectations too high, and I forget how lack of sleep, perfectionism and frequent socializing compress my introverted self into a tightly-wound knot, much as I wish they didn't. I have tried repeatedly to push myself to be what I wish I were, and I've worked valiantly to package myself as more extroverted than I really am in an effort to show more people my best self and make them feel my appreciation for them. Sadly, eventually all that crumbles and the sleepy, headachey little mouse within asks plaintively if it can please just get a little peace and quiet for a while.

Holiday socializing, even with those who are very dear and important, requires a lot of energy from introverts like me. We need quiet time to prepare for and recover from interactions with others. Extroverts don't understand this about introverts; even when we're having fun interacting with others, we're burning through reserves of energy that need regular fill-ups, and those fill-ups come from time on our own, not from spending more time in the company of others. Extroverts gain energy and comfort from doing things together; we introverts love our friends and family dearly, too, but we need time alone each day to gather our wits and prepare ourselves to be up and on and ready for action. If we don't get some time between engagements, we feel overwhelmed and anxious.

We don't want to appear unfriendly, and you're not unimportant to us just because we need to back away for a little while. We just don't gather energy from our interactions the way extroverts do. And since the U.S. population is supposedly made up of about 75% extroverts and only 25% introverts, the general cultural bias around here is toward people who draw energy from parties and who like making small talk with strangers, and who think fun equals being around other people as much as possible. These people just can't understand those of us who never went to a prom and didn't want to, and can't imagine wanting to go to a movie alone instead of going to a bar or a party. Though I love spending time in the company of dear ones, if I'm not well rested beforehand, such visits can wear me out, and then I get frustrated with myself for not being able to last longer without needing to retreat for a bit.

Among my resolutions for 2010 is to quit beating myself up for not being someone I can't be. That means not expecting myself to be a party person just because the season dictates that We Shall All Enjoy Parties Now. It means listening to my body when it tells me You Need To Go To Bed Earlier On A Regular Basis. It means worrying less about letting others down by not being as social as they want me to be and explaining that I need more time between social engagements or that I need to leave earlier than some folks do. I worry too much that people will find me a stick-in-the-mud since some in my past took umbrage at my having to spend regular time on my own. But I want to learn to look after the quiet little mouse inside better next year, rather than trying to dress her in a party dress and high heels when she really just needs some fuzzy slippers and a nice cup of chamomile tea.