Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

I'm still alive. I don't really feel alive today, but I'm still breathing and I have a pulse.

My whole adult life I've experienced insomnia. I used to have occasional days when I'd be up all night because I simply couldn't sleep. When it came to EMS, being used to staying up all night and half the next day was actually a blessing at times, so I didn't really do much about it. I knew it would pass; I knew at some point over the next day or so I'd get so tired that I'd fall asleep on my own and would sleep well.

So, when I couldn't sleep Saturday night, I didn't think much of it.

Since Sunday morning, I have gotten an accumulative total of 11 hours of sleep. I have pulled every 'get to sleep' trick I have in my repetoire, but none of them have worked.

First, I make sure I don't consume coffee or caffiene after 11am. I also am not taking any narcotics, because those fuck up my REM sleep. I don't work at my laptop after 5pm when I'm experiencing insomnia because the light from the screen messes with my circadian rhythm. I don't like milk so I've stayed away from the milky drinks, but even on the occasion I've tried them, they don't work.

None of the usual rememdies worked, so I broke out the pharmeceuticals.

Benadryl made me doze for an hour and a half, but then I was awake again. Alcohol doesn't make me sleep well, it makes me restless, so I haven't gone there. Melatonin made me feel weird and sleep for 2 hours, but it wasn't a quality sleep - I felt like I was waking up every 5 minutes and never really got under the surface and down into a deep sleep. I tried Valerian root, which smells fucking horrible (it's named Valerian because of it's odor; 'valor' is Latin for 'strength'). It made my burps smell like (according to Urbaner, aka The Hubs) 'rancid hobo feet' and whilst it made me tired, it didn't make me sleep. Last night I tried combining a little of this and a little of that. The result was a very light sleep with a wake up every twenty minutes, which wasn't restful at all.

This morning, I stood with the coffee pot in one hand and my cup in the other, not knowing what I was supposed to do next.

Today, during art class, I started crying. For no reason. The tears just came, and I started crying. Luckily it was during a power point lecture and it was dark in the auditorium so nobody saw me. In algebra, I couldn't remember how many threes were in twenty-one. On the way to political science, I started giggling, again for no reason. I went to the bathroom to try and pull myself together and sat on a toilet in the stall with tears rolling down my face, laughing almost hysterically for no apparent reason. I was afraid to go to the lecture; it felt like I was losing my fucking mind. The only thing I can compare it to is an acid trip. I dropped LSD twice in my life; the first time I had a really interesting conversation with a tree, but it ended abruptly when I realized I was standing on grass and that my weight was impeding the growth of said grass. The second time I felt a general sense of disconnection with reality that was really very unnerving and enough to make me not want to do acid again. Today is getting to be like that and it's starting to scare me. For instance, I'm not sure right now whether I'm really blogging or not. Is it just that I think I'm blogging? Will I come back later and see that I didn't blog at all? Or is this a paper for English? We were talking about hallucinogenic drugs in philosophy yesterday, am I writing this for that? Why am I writing? Who sees this?

I have a migraine. I got it yesterday, and whilst I've been keeping it at bay with a triptan, it's not really going away.

I called my doc (my wonderful, awesome primary care doc who knows the career path I'm taking and is more of a mentor to me than a physician). She made room for me this afternoon. I think that the time has come for some bigger guns than my little bathroom-cabinet pharmacy has to offer.

Sleep, why don't you like me anymore? What did I ever do to you?