The greatest thief of my time is sleep. I sleep almost constantly. I have an extremely low metabolism and a miniscule amount of energy during the day. I’m always taking naps, and if I miss a nap or spend very much time in the conscious world I start to feel heavy, like weights are attached to my arms and legs, or like there’s a fog descending over my brain. This has been the greatest disappointment of my trip to Lexington so far. I’m not able to spend time doing the things I want to do, because I’m asleep.
It’s been this way for years, since I first went on medication. I’ve always been a frequent sleeper, and never did get much exercise, but the amount of sleep I need vastly increased after I started taking it. It feels like much of the past five years have passed in a haze of semi-consciousness, and the days all flow into one another with very little to differentiate them. I wish I could stay awake more hours of the day. I suppose the only way to change that is to change my diet and my sedentary habits.
Sometimes I sleep for reasons besides being tired. I’ll often get a medication side-effect that I call the “fuzzy head” — it’s sort of a tingling headache that won’t go away. Other times my joints will ache, or I’ll be depressed, or bored, or I won’t feel like playing the game or reading the book I’ve got on my list, so I’ll sleep for a few hours. It seems like my default response to any negative circumstance is to sleep.
As a result, the sleep that I do get is very poor quality. I can’t stay asleep for more than an hour or two at a time, even at night. I’m constantly waking up to smoke cigarettes. Maybe once or twice every other night I’ll get a good three hours of uninterrupted sleep but never much more than that. I’m supposed to schedule a sleep study with one of those sleep disorder clinics to determine my problem, but I’m afraid they’ll just tell me to do things I already know I need to do: lose weight, stop drinking so much caffeine and sleep only in my bed at night. I’ve read that much about sleep hygiene on the web.
I’ve also become very sensitive to where I sleep. I used to be able to curl up on the floor, or in a chair, or anywhere, but now if I do that I keep waking up every thirty minutes. It doesn’t help that the only bed I have is a mattress lying on the floor. I sleep okay on it, but it’s a lot better when I have a proper bed with a box spring and everything. Whenever I visit family and am exposed to a higher quality bed, I sleep longer hours, and feel more refreshed when I wake up. I wonder if getting one of those Sleep Number beds or TempurPedic beds would help me sleep. I’ve also considered getting a doctor to prescribe me something like Ambien, but I’m kinda afraid of some of the more hairy side effects of that kind of medication. I seem to be rather sensitive to side effects.
My sleep is also populated with extremely bizarre dreams. I frequently dream of traveling through dimensions, or time, or bursting through new types of consciousness into alternate realities. Sometimes I get stuck in what I call a “repetition dream” where the same few seconds of time repeat infinitely, with minor variations. It’s always a relief to wake up from such dreams. I usually feel a little worn out afterward, and I sometimes smoke two or three cigarettes to recover. I don’t know if these dreams are some kind of chemical imbalance or yet another side effect.
Speaking of which, it’s about time for my afternoon nap right now. I don’t feel particularly sleepy, but I’ll probably end up taking the nap anyway because I don’t feel like I have enough time left to enjoy any of my hobbies before my brother gets home and starts monopolizing the computer and television. I still have my string theory book to read, though, so that’ll kill another thirty minutes to an hour.