It began in January. Or perhaps February. I wasn't paying close attention and the exact date doesn't much matter anyway. Somewhere deep in the endless Minnesota winter I stopped sleeping well. I began waking throughout the night and earlier in the morning than I cared to. You must understand, as sleepers go I reigned supreme, if I do say so myself. I could go to bed at pretty much any time, summon the slumber of the dead and arise anywhere from 5 to 14 uninterrupted hours later. It depended on what the day required in terms of me being up and functioning. Monday through Friday saw me getting 6-7 hours while weekends were Sleepapalooza. Now, this is not to say I ever felt rested. Feeling refreshed and re-energized when my feet hit the floor is a concept as foreign to me as shaving my legs in the winter. Truly, never in my life do I recall getting up and thinking "What a great night's sleep! I am so ready to tackle the day, even if it means herding wildebeests or counting every single grain of rice in the western hemisphere." Most of the time I arise counting the number of hours until I can put myself back to bed, even if just for a brief nap.
I LOVE to sleep. I attribute some of this devotion to what goes on while I'm "under." Oh, you guys...I wish you could borrow my brain to experience the funky, psychedelic and highly entertaining playground that is my dream life. True, I do have a recurring nightmare about our housing situation. Most of the time we've purchased a new home that is way above our budget and we still have to unload our current house. The new house is nearly always defective in some way: it was built at the edge of the ocean and is frequently flooded; half of it is without walls and thus exposed to every manner of weather; or it is constructed of cream cheese and melts a bit more each day. All I want in these dreams is to get back to our current house where it's safe and familiar. I've had this dream for years and I still have no idea what it means. Dream interpreters, have at it. Other than those dreams and the occasional ones featuring car crashes which no one could ever survive, my dreams are technicolor fantasies replete with singing, dancing and original music that I can't recall when I wake up, no matter how hard I try.
As if that weren't enough, I also am adept at lucid dreaming. When a dream is getting bizarre I sometimes question whether I might really be asleep. For example, I once dreamed I was in the lobby of a hotel and had a feeling that all was not as it seemed. I told myself that if a vase of red flowers rose from the middle of a bare, round table that meant I was dreaming. Sure enough, seconds later a vase of lovely red roses came up out of the table. Time to play! When I'm lucid dreaming I can manipulate the objects, people, sights, sounds, and smells around me. A lot of times I just make myself thin and try on pretty dresses but it depends on the night. Even if I'm not dreaming lucidly I can usually remember my dreams in stunning detail and there are LOTS of them. Not going to lie, it gets weird in there. With this new sleep disturbance I lost the ability to remember my dreams and it's a loss I'm taking pretty hard.
After a few of weeks of my new and unwelcome sleep pattern I began to wonder what in the hairy hell was going on. For some time now I have been an avid and dedicated snorer, so of course I considered sleep apnea. It would certainly explain why I never wake feeling rested. I also thought about the possibility of menopause being an issue. I'm one of the lucky ones who went through menopause at a very early age (43) and had no symptoms other than no longer having to trot to Walgreens at midnight to buy tampons. I consider this karma for all of my fertility issues and the years I went through getting my period every 18 days. Last summer my OBGYN did a blood test to confirm menopause and we determined that not only was I done with menopause, I was really, really, REALLY done with menopause. Like the level that came back in the result showed I was on par with 60-65 year old women. Yay! The state of my ovaries matching my gray hair is all I ever wanted in life, much like my shoes matching my bag.
In retrospect I realize that this disturbance in my sleep force was probably a harbinger of depression. Last spring I was feeling pretty good and asked my doctor to wean me off of Zoloft so I could see if I could do without it. Spoiler alert: I can't. I had gone through a period of depression and anxiety in 2007 that responded well to therapy and medication. But mental illness, being what it is, sometimes tricks you into thinking it's no longer there. Maybe in some people it goes away. Me, not so much. I am here to tell you that there is still a lot of stigma attached to mental illness. Some of the pressure to look at it as a weakness or inability to cope comes from me and my shame but it's external as well. The malady that you cannot see often gets short shrift in the believability department. Over the coming days, weeks and months I hope to blog more about my experiences, the meltdown that led to a week of inpatient hospitalization and where I go from here. I don't know how often I'll write or how much detail I'll include but as long as it's therapeutic for me, I'll try to soldier on.
Wishing everyone who reads this peace in their heart and good mental health!
