27 March 2008

Dagnet Rund

Swedish, for 'All day long' or more literally, 'the day round'

I have had trouble with sleeping for years. Long years, since college. No remedy I have tried, other than habit-forming sleeping pills, has ever helped much. Before I sought help for the depression, I was sleeping less than 3-4 hours a night.

Not being able to sleep is not the same thing at all as not being tired. I'm always tired. Tired does not always equal sleepy. I don't climb in to bed until I'm actually sleepy; otherwise, I'm tossing and turning for hours instead of sleeping.

In the last few weeks, I've been sleeping too much. I know, how on earth can I complain about too much sleep? I'm not complaining, exactly, just observing. I have been heading to bed earlier than usual, and sleeping much later than usual.

I've been a morning person as far back as I can remember. Early rising never presented a problem for me. As a teenager, or in my early college days, you would seldom if ever find me still sleeping at 11 AM on a Saturday. When I started working out in 2006, I was at the gym every day at 5.30 when it opened, usually waking shortly before 5 AM and out the door before 5.10.

Lately, though, it is all I can do to drag myself out of bed before 7 AM. This isn't quite the same as the days when I can't get out of bed due to the depression. When that's the case, I'm not sleeping, just can't summon the energy to get up, get moving. This is different, because I'll glance at the clock, and it is 6.30, and I'll say to myself, "just 5 more minutes" and the next thing I know it is 7.30. Somehow, that switch in my head that gets me not just awake at 5 AM but conscious, isn't working anymore.

I haven't needed an alarm clock for years. When I was working for ye olde evile bank, I was driving about 110 miles a day for my commute, spending huge amounts of time on the road. I had to be in the car, on the way to work by 6.30 in the morning. I did that for 7 long years, and my internal clock would just wake me up by 5.30 at the latest.

My internal clock still wakes me up at 5, but I go back to sleep. Deep sleep, so deeply that I don't hear DH leaving for work as he does daily around 6.30. And I'm normally a very light sleeper.

I want to write this off as normal, because I've been running around like a maniac quite a bit. My weekends for the last month have been insanely busy. I'm busy during the workdays, and stressed over my soul-sucking job. Every time we change the clocks either way, spring or fall, it messes with my internal clock and I get over-tired. The weather is still dreary, grey, overcast, cold, rainy. So yeah, I should be sleepy. Right?

I'm always trying to keep track of how many hours of sleep I get; even when I sleep well, I never sleep for more than 4-5 hours at a time. I wake frequently. Uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep is that holy grail that I can never seem to attain. Often, when I wake at 2 or 3 in the morning, that's it, my body says, 'sorry, you're done sleeping' and I'm awake for good. Not lately. I wake, and then go back to sleep, and only have vague memories of waking in the morning. I feel like I could sleep round the clock.

What the hell is going on here?

2 comments:

Dawna said...

Easy, you're catching up!

Lucy Arin said...

:-)

LOL. Perhaps. I don't know. But it is nice to get more sleep, I know that.