No Sleep, No Sex

Let me start by saying this title is entirely misleading. There is nothing about sex in this post, but it seemed catchy in the title. Secondly, it's not about the lack of sleep I'm having, but the opposite problem... sort of. Let me explain.

The past 6 days or so I have been falling asleep at roughly 5am. A few days ago, I went to bed at 2am (not unreasonable) but woke up at 7:30am and couldn't go back to sleep. I was so exhausted by 1pm that at that time I took a 4 hour nap, waking up at 5pm. My sleep schedule has been complete erratic. Mostly, I'll get into bed around 2, fall asleep around 5, and wake up around 2pm. This is very, very bad. I missed my morning classes on Thursday and my morning classes today, which means I've missed a full week of those classes.

This problem isn't new to me, as I've generally had sleep issues on and off for the past 7 years or so, but it's been quite a while since I've had it this bad. It's a bit scary because it's very hard for me to fix, and also because it's the beginning of the school year and I really wanted to start off on the right foot. Yet, here I am, missing in-class assignments and valuable lecture notes. It's upsetting.

Perhaps the worst of it is the fact that I am spending so much time in my bed, thinking thinking thinking, unable to turn off my brain and call it a night. Last night, around 4am, I was so fed up with not sleeping that I grabbed my ipod and mindlessly searched for songs to sing along to. I watched things on Hulu on my computer. I tried different positions, tried eating, tried drinking, but nothing. It's extremely strenuous attempting sleep, when I know my sleep schedule is so messed up that my body won't even allow it.

When I finally wake up for my morning class when my alarm goes off, it feels like 5 in the morning to someone who sleeps normal hours. There is no way I can get out of bed. This is the weak part of me, the part that grabs hold of sleep when I finally find it and doesn't let go. I almost want to cry when my alarm goes off because the antidote to my late night torture is being taken away from me. This pattern I've fallen into is very dangerous for my health, my lifestyle, and my academics. Waking up in the afternoon is a bad way to go about each day, especially if I don't have anything to do in the middle of the night while I'm awake.

To make matters worse, I had a dream last night that my friend Maggie and I were shopping, or something like that in a big city, and I was wearing my retainer for the first time in a long time. I knew my teeth were shifting, but when I took my retainer out to talk to a salesperson I could feel that one of my teeth had loosened in the straightening process. I touched it and it fell out, with a little bit of blood. I could feel a new tooth emerging underneath, which was strange because obviously I had already gotten all of my adult teeth years ago. As I was freaking out, I noticed another tooth was a bit loose, so I wiggled it and then it fell out too! I'm pretty sure I was hysterical at this point, and then a third tooth fell out. I was holding a napkin with three of my adult teeth, and all I wanted to do was call my mother to find out what I should do but I had no phone. And then I woke up, and it was 12:30pm, and I had overslept my classes.

~L