Resting places

So I went down for a little stroll to the grocery store today, and I was so tired I almost fell asleep while walking. But then I sat down on a bench to have a cigarette and I nodded off constantly, in minus degrees. If I didn't have my irrational fear of sleep and focused on that cigarette, I could easily have fallen asleep right then and there.

Oh damn, I think I fell asleep on the floor. Woke up just a few hours later, so I'm just gonna count this as a nap. Naps are okay, as long as they are under 3 hours long. Especially since I wasn't even aware of what I was doing prior to falling asleep. A dream not yet dreamt made me believe that I had some important mission to do and needed to reach a relaxed state in order to do so. Then I actually dreamt that I went through with that absurd mission. Or was it even a dream? I was pretty gone on my rug with just a blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

Today, it seems I have discovered that by this point, I could fall asleep just about anywhere and anytime. Not at all dangerous... Just keep in doors away from flammable objects then. And hope I won't fall asleep while smoking somewhere. Would be such a drag if I torched the place and myself in it.

Keep trying

Fuck it, I have to start over again. How damn hard can it be? I don't understand. Over coming tiredness shouldn't be that fucking hard. Sure, caffeine had no effect, and neither did sugar this morning right before I crashed. But I could have taken a walk or something. At that point I had been awake around 70 hours and had started slapping my face to the point of it aching, blushing red. But it only helped for a few seconds each time. My last resort is usually inflicting pain, without creating wounds, cause wounds release endorphins which make me relaxed. I want to achieve the opposite effect, I want adrenaline. It's been tricky trying to find out what works.

I'm obsessed with this shit, and especially now. I have less than a week to get this done. I want my hundred hours before I stop trying to be awake around the clock and start trying to get a rhythm including sleep again. My next meeting with my psychologist is on Friday, and by then I must be able to say that I have tried and practised that as I said I would do last Friday. I can't screw this up again.

This time, I've calculated to which time and date I will be finished. Until 2 o'clock at night between Wednesday and Thursday I will have to keep these tired eyes of mine open. So I will only have one day and one night to practice that circadian rhythm, as long as I don't fail again, and I won't fail this time. It's stupidly little time left before the meeting, and I will probably have to lie if I want my shrink to keep believing that I actually want to get things normalised again. Cause I really do want that, it's just that I think I won't be able to let go and give my best unless I've reached my crazy achievement first. Maybe it wouldn't be so stupid to tell my shrink that though. Maybe it's irrational that I have this belief, but I think that maybe she would understand why I have it.

I know myself too damn well, and that gut feeling is most likely correct. That I would have that gnawing feeling that I won't be able to give my best to get back to normal again if I feel like a failure for not having reached those 100 hours of sleep deprivation. Maybe it's not so stupid after all: that is a high number of hours, and it would be difficult to break such a record in the future, so it's possible I won't try to break it later on. I believe it will help me to put this behind me once and for all.

I'm still counting

Eventually I fell asleep this time as well, some time after 3:00 am, early Sunday morning and I have slept from then until 11:00 today. By then I had been awake for 91 hours, almost 4 days. I'm not sure what made me crash this time, I usually don't see the reason. Perhaps the pain, confusion and tiredness just got too much to handle. It's hard to say. But I remember that I said "I can't do it any longer" just before I crashed. The last three or four hours were kinda awful.

I'm getting into a new state where being awake for 24 hours is just me "newly awakened"...

So this is my way of escaping it all. By counting hours, I escape my fear of sleep. It makes it easier to be awake, and it's easier to deal with when I can't keep awake any longer. Cause then, falling asleep is just "a minor setback" rather than feeling like the monster I've been running from just devoured me. It's easier to make being awake into an achievement of sleep deprivation, than to face my fear of sleep. So maybe I do want to break the world record as I know it, 11 days. Just slowly increasing the number of hours each time. Next goal? 100 hours. That means that I'll have to stay awake until 15:00 on Friday.

Gonna see my shrink that day. She's gonna hate me... whatever I tell her, it's hard to hide the fact that you've been awake for half a week. Make up, yeah... how about a face lift!

Need to go shopping today. Running out of food and cigarettes. That's really everything I spend money on these days.

I've forgotten how nice it felt: hate. No, it's probably not gone that far, or how to say it. But wanting to curse someone is a step on that way, eh?

There's something weird about a particular sweater of mine. It seems to keep me much warmer than it should be able to. It's just a knitted shirt, nothing special about it really. But in whatever temperature I happen to be, it keeps me just warm enough. Stupid of me to be scared of a fucking shirt... yet, this has to be due to something weird in my mind. I react differently on temperatures than normally.

It's like back in mid summer, when I could wear the exact same outfit for a week without being cold or too warm in everything from 10 to 30 degrees. I think I'm back there, in that state. I haven't figured out exactly what it is, but my mind is probably behind it. Not the clothes, not the thermometer. Though my instincts turn to those.

Just another addiction

Had a little nap. Just fell asleep on the sofa at eight on Wednesday evening and woke up just now, four o'clock in this early Friday morning. A 32 hours nap, breaking my previous record of the longest time I've been asleep for. Of course I woke up a few times during my visit to dream-/nightmareland, but I didn't want to get up. So I just stayed there. I chose to get up at this early hour because I'm going to see my shrink at 11:00 and I want to have some time just doing nothing before getting ready for that. It's not like I need to sleep more.

So this is it then? My sleep habit summed up in a month or two: awake for 30 to 80 hours, sleep for 20 to 30 hours. Afraid of sleeping and addicted to sleep deprivation for as long as my body and mind can take it. Cause yeah, that's what happened this time. I realised that I'm not just hypnophobic, but also addicted to causing myself sleep deprivation. How I figured that one out? I had miscalculated the hours of awaken time, from what I believed was 4 days, was actually only 3 days. I was upset that I had not at all reached something close to 100 hours, but "just" around 75 hours, barely breaking my old record.

"Was I proud over my imaginary extra 24 hors making me believe I'm close to a 100 hours of sleep deprivation? Was I fucking proud?!" I wrote in my paper diary. The anxiety that realisation gave me was a bit more than I could take. So I took 2 Zyprexa, 2 caff. pills and downed them with a solution of 2 Bamyl Koffein. Hoping that all the caffeine would keep me awake while the Zyprexa usually makes me tired. Failed. So I can't even take Zyprexa for my anxiety anymore? Well that's just great.

I gave up and stopped fighting. I felt like shit after what felt like 95 hours but was only 75. I couldn't do it, keep on fighting with all those feelings of being a fucking failure. Something I shouldn't feel like a failure over. So I took my horrible feelings and lied down on the sofa. When misery wins over misery.

A glimpse into my altered world

16:12
This is the longest I've ever been awake for without any sleep or power napping or the like. 73 hours, or 3 days and 3 nights just passed in this, rather undead like state of being. I feel like a zombie, tired but not sleepy. Trying to occupy myself with films, embroidery, music, writing and knitting in varying order and combinations.

It's really starting to take its toll now, feels like my brain is turning into mush or something. Right now about half the world around me isn't real, I presume, cause with some things it's hard to tell. I'm having tactile, visual and auditory hallucinations almost constantly by now. They are weird, but not frightening. Every picture looks to be slowly moving, like an image cut in gif in slow motion. I'm looking at a picture of a woman with one hand on her chest and though it is a still photo, I can see her her hand softly stroking across her collar bone. Like if she touched herself or floated in water. Very graceful indeed.

23:53
It feels like I'm under water, on a sinking ship. The way my floor is unstable, and seems to rock under my feet, the way my vision is blurred and everything is having a slow dance as if I see the world through water. Distorted sounds with weird, misplaced thumping and clonking here and there. Yes, it actually feels a lot like I'm on a sinking ship. Yet I calmly sit here, not the least worried or scared. It's just strange, but still it isn't. It's just a feeling, a likeness, and I don't really believe that I'm literally drowning. It doesn't feel like drowning at all actually, it's soothing somehow.

I have gotten used to my supposedly different, or altered, world view cause I know of nothing else. Had I become psychotic over night from living a seemingly normal life until that moment I'd probably be very frightened. I don't even know if my world actually is psychotic, but I doubt that it is normal. Somewhere in between most days, and some days with a little extra spice; and others, very few days thankfully, are nightmarish.

So just how is my world view not "normal"? Because everything, people, events, things, conversations can or may not be real. Some times they are, other times they aren't. I interpret things differently. Read private messages sent specifically to me, masked to be hidden to others, in the strangest places and ways. I can hear the trees cry, the clouds are deciding my mood, water is whispering to me and I know when a certain piece of furniture has something personally against me - to mention a few things. This isn't figuratively speaking, in my world that is real and literally.

01:12
So strange... I don't feel tired or sleepy or drowsy at all. Yet I haven't had a single mg of caffeine in over three hours. It wears off fast for me. Kicks in with full power immediately and then wears off about half an hour to an hour later. I don't know if it's fun or just saddening to count the hours of being awake at this point, but I'm up at 83 hours now. I wonder if I'll reach 100, which is slightly over 4 days. A week is 168 hours. Good to know, and hope I won't go that far... would feel kind of devastated if I go to my psychologist appointment on Friday and tell her I've been awake since two o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday...

Keep me awake

I'm falling apart. How the hell is this day gonna be? I'm supposed to wash my laundry in the afternoon and I already feel like a wreck drenched twice. I'm so damn cold, and just waiting for the temperature to rise is obviously not gonna give any result, it won't exceed 20 degrees just by itself. But at the same times I'm too warm, like feverish almost. Too damn much caffeine, I've exceeded the max limit dosage for 24 hours in 3 hours and more so. Almost twice that even. Aw, fuck my life...

Can I even call "this" a life? Feels like I'm on the railway station between reality and insanity, waiting to aboard one or the other train. For me it's not a thin line between those two polar extremes, it's a whole fucking world and I'm stuck in it. Though sometimes I step over completely into insanity, but I don't think I've ever completely been in reality.

Fuck, this shit is wearing me out, I don't wanna do this any more. I just wanna stop being scared of sleeping and being able to keep a circadian rhythm for once again in my life. This is ruining so much and I feel like shit for every hour that passes in this agony, for every night and counting that I've been awake for, until I completely lose conception of time (I had to count how many nights I've been up) and my body aches so much I can't even sit up straight. And I can't even tell if I need to eat cause I can't for the world remember when was the last time I ate or even if it's hunger that I feel somewhere in all this pain.

Still so many hours left... I can't eat. I haven't eaten in the gods know how many hours and I can't even get down a lousy pancake. Need to buy some nutrition shakes or anything. This is too much. I've cut down on the caffeine, don't need it any more, hunger and pain keeps me awake. Nervous breakdown bound to happen any day now... fuck everything damn it.

Simply existing

I think I'm opting for a caffeine overdose tonight. Six pills and two energy drinks in less than three hours. That would count as eight cups of coffee... Don't worry, I'll call an ambulance before I go into cardiac arrest. It's when I reach this state, after being awake for more than 30 hours and the third night falls, I get so tired that I have to double or triple my caffeine consumption to be able to keep awake. I've never been able to be up for four nights or more in a row, so can't tell how that would go.

I'm shivering, chain smoking and can't think about anything but simply existing right now. Holding my breath, breathe, feel my jaded heartbeats and the coldness on my back, the smoke in my eyes, the robe belt fastened too tight around my waist, my tense stomach, rocking myself to the rhythm to the music and the little aches in my wrists from all the typing.

Existing... why is it so hard sometimes? There's so much on my mind it's nothing at all. My whole body aches, except for my knees for some reason. Focus on them then. But I can't feel them, the little comfort there is disappears in all the pain. Why does my body have to be such a bitch? Demanding things I simply cannot give it. Is that how I am disabled? That I can't provide my body what it needs cause I'm that crazy. And I'm constantly deteriorating and I've been doing so since ever. But my body is strong, young and healthy.

Yet I feel old. Cause I can't carry the weight I have, constantly aching, tired and have no energy at all. I have all time in the world, but no energy to do anything the world has to give me. Not so strange that I feel like shit. And I'm still wanting to get in shape so it can give me some of that energy I lack, but knowing deep inside my heart that's not the way it works. It didn't work in junior high, so why should it now? I was healthier and younger then, ate better and trained karate three times a week, yet I was so damn tired and constantly aching already then. I just chose to ignore it, until I no longer could.

So why bother then? First of all, because I'm not gonna give up just because I've lost my hopes. That might sound contradiction, but it isn't. One is a feeling, the other is a choice, and I chose to go against that feeling.

I'm cold sweating now also. I hate it when that happens but I know it so well. Shivering in my own sweat, my body cooling itself down when I'm already cold which makes me even colder. This night feels so damn long, and it has barely just begun.

Hating this addiction

I hate it that I cut so much nowadays. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Hate that I'm so dependent on it, that I can't hack it without it, no matter how much medicine I take (no, not over dosing). Fall in blood pressure, the fuck?! I haven't bled that much... or have I? I'm not counting it in millilitres, but it could have been a drip or two too much today. Damn it.

Also I'm a little anaemic all the time. Barely noticeable for a doctor, but I'm this hyper sensitive sort of person, so I notice it quite much. Besides, it's bright red leaning to pink in colour. So what I'm saying is that me bleeding just a little more than any other person would think is "not a big deal" could technically make me a little dizzy and cause fall in blood pressure. But I'll survive though, don't worry, I always do, don't I?

I'm fighting this war against myself, so much I'm really starting to wonder who the hell is gonna win. My body usually does, one way or another. There's only so long you can resist your body's needs until the body gets what it needs no matter the fuck what. Sleep deprivation? Crash on the floor 75 hours later. Starvation? Pass out wherever you happen to be after around 3 days. Blood loss? Faint. Over all the crashing part seem to be the first logical choice when I've been abusing my body to the absolute breaking point. Just "sobering up" no matter what shit I've been doing, seems to do the trick.

This anxiety is eating me alive, tearing my insides apart and I can't get rid of it. Like a virus infecting my every cell and fibre. For almost 24 hours I've been awake and roughly 20 of them have been riddled with anxiety. It glows in neon on my face. No it doesn't, none of my feeling ever show. Or at least very seldom unless I really want them to be seen.

I feel like I'm trapped in a maze and after looking for a way out for hours and hours I'm starting to try climbing up the walls. I don't know what to do with myself. It hasn't been this bad for a long time now. Or well, a few weeks tops, but still. I'm gonna stop saying "this fucking summer" and start saying "this fucking year" instead...

Shaping up

I finally had a talk with my mother. I had an anxiety outbreak and taking my pills for that made the whole experience even worse. So instead of spiraling completely out of control I called my mother yesterday. I ended up confessing about one thing and the other, and then I also explained that about her not believing me. Also Schizophrenia came up, but to my utmost surprise it wasn't I who mentioned it! How interesting that she also had been thinking of that possibility. We cleared up our misconceptions and I got a few answers to my queries. I didn't tell her about my Satanism, but I did tell her about my previous alcoholism, hypnophobia and cutting. So I got a little off my chest.

Had an appointment with my psychiatrist today, and told her about my messy addiction journey I had going on this summer, my sleeping problems and what more. Got a different type of as needed meds for my anxiety and she sent a referral to someone who can help me quit smoking, on my request of course. I also whined about the psychiatry not doing a shit to help me heal my mental wounds. Not much she could do about that though, but I’m off to Vuxenhabiliteringen on Friday so I can keep on whining there instead.

The solution we agreed on, about my sleeping problem, is as follows. Stop consuming caffeine after 5 o'clock in the evening, start taking my sedatives/sleeping pills again, get a circadian rhythm again with help from the crew. I asked them if they can wake me up a bit more brutally in the morning, and they said they can absolutely do that. They're handy like that. I also got a higher dosage on my mood stabilisers, to get my extra extreme mood swings under control again. My motivator for getting in better shape is to be fit for surgery, and so we all (me, my mother and the psychiatrist) agreed that is a good motivator. So it's high time for me to pull myself together a bit again.

Escaping

I'm scrolling down through several hundred tumblr posts to find his posts that doesn't appear on his page for some reason. Wow, I must be really obsessed... but if I got an answer post, shouldn't it show up in my inbox? I don't know, better safe than sorry I guess.

I managed to get rid of most of my headache, thanks to some Aspirin. Feels like I’m just waiting for the morning to come, so I won't be stuck bored with nothing to do, just wanting to keep crafting or even just redo a waistcoat to a three piece suit I found second hand. Or to just take walk, have a reason to shower, wear make up and dressing up nice. I’m trying to get used to wearing make up again.

I’m listening to songs about suicide, feeling lonely and broken. Maybe it would be nice to just jump and fall free? It's the closest I'd ever get to flying. I’m trying not to think that way, and maybe this is just a fantasy, a mind game to see if I could really do it someday. Testing myself. I’m doing that from time to time. Isn't it sad that I find “suicide” to be one of the most beautiful English words? The most beautiful word being “sovereign” which is almost its opposite, meaning “confident” or “governor”.

Alright, time has passed to forenoon and I’m off for some shopping. I must have miscalculated when I wrote that it was 33 hours to the appointment with my psychiatrist on Wednesday. It was actually 57 hours, with 48 hours remaining. That might be harder than I expected to stay up for, but it feels like I really don't have much other choice than to do so. Good thing I’ve written a list of everything I intend to say at the meeting, so I don't really need to be sharp as a knife, so to speak.

Found this amazing, beautiful song by Radiohead called “How to disappear completely” and I dream away to someplace else while listening to it. I see endless fields of red sand and dead plants, sand swirling in the wind, a few naked trees in the distance, a clear blue sky. No living creature anywhere to be seen. I want to be there, just sitting on a rock warm in the sun, feeling the wind on my face. So far from civilisation, my own miserable life, everything. I really like that I’m so good at visualisation, even imagining what warm winds and sand in my face could feel like, what it would smell like, even though I’ve never been to such a place. Not in the real world at least, just in my dreams and imagination. Maybe that is why I’m good at drawing and writing? Cause I can see and sense things so clearly in my head, I mean.

I collect “happy places”, imaginary places where I go to relax or escape from something in the real world. Whether it be an anxiety attack, a quarrel, on the verge on dissociation or just stressed out. My favourite is a meadow, a green field with white, blue, pink and purple flowers; a surrounding forest on both sides, a clear blue sky with little white clouds and a calming breeze. Sometimes I just stand there on the field, other times I lie down or run around.

Sometimes I run to the end of the field, a few hundred metres or so the meadow ends and there's a cliff. Not a steep one, but gently leaning towards a small beach. It's a little tricky climbing down the boulders and rocks to the light yellow sand leading to a calm ocean. I have only once or twice bathed in that imaginary ocean, I only ever go that far when I’m in a very difficult situation and very much need to calm down and relax, or literally need to escape but can't. I think I created this place two or three years ago, so I know it quite well.

I feel strange, like distant. Maybe I'm still in that desert.