May is Mental Health Awareness Month. And we decided to showcase a variety of approaches and perspectives–two memoirs followed by one work of fiction. We noticed that sleep plays a big role in all three and that is no coincidence–too little sleep or too much is such a common ingredient in a person’s mental health story. Plus it’s in those wee hours when it seems like the rest of the world has gone to bed that we feel our most desperate or frustrated… or our most calm and collected. Be well.
-Ed.
Taking Sleep for Granted
Sometimes it feels like my head is empty, save for pieces of myself that have broken off and are rattling around disconnected. Somewhere in that mess is both my ability to sleep and my ability to remain stable; out of all the pieces of myself that I’ve lost, I think I miss those the most. Sleep and stability are two things people often take for granted until they are no longer there, but they are two things I’ve never really had. I have sacrificed a lot to get to where I am today, but a lot of the time it feels like sleep and stability was the highest price I paid to survive.
Even as a child sleep was difficult and is usually the first indicator that something is wrong as an adult. It signals when my mood is too elevated and I’m pulling away from reality, and it signals when I’m getting too low and the sweet whispers of depression are too believable to argue with. It’s a good barometer for physical illness, both contagious and not, as well. Sleep is often the very first thing to go out the window when something is wrong in either my headspace or my physical body. Sleep is a great reset for me when it comes to any sort of illness, but it’s hard to achieve when those very same illnesses prevent it. It’s especially difficult when you rely so heavily on a function that has been fickle to begin with.
Unfortunately tied into this is my ability to remain stable. Sometimes my problems with sleep indicate a mood shift has happened, but sometimes it can trigger one as well. Getting too little sleep and being forced to wake up early can cause mania, but so can getting sick and sleeping too much. It often feels like the smallest shift in my sleeping habits brings catastrophic results, because I am not “mildly” sick. My actual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and cPTSD can be hard to treat; the sad part is sleep issues have been a problem for me from day one, as I struggled to sleep well even as a newborn.
This all makes sleep necessary, both to prevent mood swings, and as a gauge of how I’m
doing overall. But sleep is hard when my body can’t rest due to pain. Sleep is hard when I’m so congested, I wake up feeling like I’m suffocating every hour on the hour, simply because I have
a terrible immune system and get sick easily. Or when my mind won’t let go of something, even
something that happened decades ago, or things that have never happened and never will, and I
lay there ruminating instead of sleeping. Sleep is even hard when I’m too tired, which seems the
most unfair.
I wish there was something out there that could squeeze my broken pieces back together, to put back those chunks that were shorn off and never reattached or grew back. I try to cope with medication and relaxation and sometimes meditation, but it’s all varying degrees of imperfect. The medication comes with side effects, but meditation can cause flashbacks if I get too relaxed. Sleep is something we all take for granted until it gets taken away, for whatever reason, and I miss that naiveté even though it’s not something I ever really had. Sleep, more often than not, feels like a privilege I’ve never had; and as I grow older, I feel the lack of that very privilege more and more but have no idea how to rectify that envy.
J. Pagaduan
J. Pagaduan (he/they) is an author best known for their genre-bending style. They write to process the half-remembered nightmares and waking dreams that would otherwise follow them into the waking plane; and to try to make the world a little better than they found it.
Quetiapine: Too Much Sleep
Every morning, after 10-14 hours of sleep, I feel awake. I’m not refreshed. I’m not energized. I am only awake. My eyes stay tired for the entire day, and I often take a mid-afternoon catnap, only to be looking forward to going back to bed for the rest of the evening.
During my day, I craft, watch television, and accomplish maybe one or two tasks around the house. That’s really all I have the mental or physical energy for. I am hoping to be able to make enough money from crafting to pay for insurance. That’s a big dream of mine. It’s really hard on my partner to provide for me, since I’m not able to work. I put a lot of energy into our relationship though, and I try to take on the things they don’t have time for. Unfortunately, I don’t drive, so they still end up doing a lot for our home; I’m incredibly grateful to them.
I was denied once for disability, and no lawyers would take me to appeal since I’m under thirty. Apparently, youthfulness makes up for daytime drowsiness from medication, paranoia that can’t be medicated, and unpredictable panic attacks. Social security is convinced that, despite my persecutory delusions being triggered by authority figures, I should really just get a job.
I had a full-time job: two years ago. The last year that I worked, I showed up on average twice a week with doctor’s notes from my psychiatrist excusing the rest. I stopped going to work shortly after I got my schizoaffective diagnosis, but the reason I stopped going to work was because I was afraid my coworkers would turn on me.
I had a panic attack in the middle of the file room surrounded by 200 people at their desks. I screamed for help. I fell to the ground begging for an ambulance. People just stared for several minutes until an elderly lady rushed to my aid. I told the kind lady that I had no pulse, and that I was bleeding out from my period. My supervisor came, found my pulse, and sat with me for thirty minutes until my partner picked me up. After that I was afraid that since everyone knew I was crazy, they’d accuse me of things, and I’d be targeted by the police. I went back once after that, and couldn’t make myself go again.
Regardless, I am one of the lucky ones. I am loved and have a great support system, therapist, and psychiatrist. Better than that, every day I take two meds: quetiapine fumarate and duloxetine. They don’t stop the paranoia or the panic attacks, and they make me really tired. Nevertheless, they do stop the voices, the hallucinations, the weird thoughts, the dissociating, and most of the delusions. I can’t function at all without them; with them, I feel tired but sane. I’m so grateful to the meds for the 10-14 hours I get to live an almost normal life, every single day.
Dixie Jo
Dixie Jo has nearly completed an MA in TESOL and English Literature, and intends to write stories influenced by queerness and mental health. She also modifies dolls and crochets clothing and accessories for them.
Indistinct Background Character on a Field of Grey
It is just after dawn. I have abandoned the quest for sleep – or it has abandoned me, I’m not sure.
Eyes burning, leaden legs swinging off the bed against their will, I drag myself from the fruitless bed to the bathroom. Turning on the tap, I sigh at the grumble and groan of ancient pipes called to song one more time against their will.
The room is stifled and obscure, with only fingers of light protruding under the thick blinds. I feel the weariness in my bones, the paper of my skin ready to crumple and tear if looked at from the wrong angle. I can’t remember what day it is. I haven’t left the little box of an apartment in a week. I haven’t seen the need.
I don’t recognise myself in the mirror.
I am a smudge of paint on canvas, a filler in somebody else’s story left undeveloped beyond the artist’s fleeting thought, an unfulfilled lump to fill the negative space on a field of grey. I am black oils daubed too thickly and left to find their own shape on the surface, raised and stubby without detail or voice.
I don’t recognise myself. And yet I do recognise myself; the way the light and dark falls on the canvas is unmistakably me. I gaze upon the painting, wistless and losing myself, rooted to the sticky lino beneath my feet, the hard plastic begging to be porcelain beneath my hands. I could disappear into the canvas if I wanted to. It could be worse. I could have woken up as an insect.
The smudge of paint extends a tendril, pencil-thin, and the movement matches the roll of my arm as I go to brush away the hair I feel on my forehead. The tendrils form spindle-fingers as I hold them before my face. I could be a ghost, a tree, my own microscopic work of art, I realise. I laugh. A surprised, barking sound at the thought of a smudge of paint waving.
I am blurted out of myself as the world encroaches.
Beneath the window, the hum of an indistinct voice on a doorstep, the clump and whirr of a car door and the engine as it drives away. The chitter of birdsong. The promise of a hot day to come, even now, even just past the morning twilight.
The blind is to the right of the sink. I pull it up, crushing my eyes tight against the flood of sunshine I knew was coming but wasn’t prepared for. It must be far beyond dawn, I think with a half-smile; perhaps I have lost a whole morning wondering how to tunnel myself into the canvas on the mirror.
I turn back to it. Gone is the smudge and the directionless grey field behind it. Instead is a man. Deep black circles under the eyes, stubble that should have been shaved off days before, but a man. I smile back at myself and decide to go outside.
David O’Mahony
David O’Mahony (he/him) is an experienced copy editor and newspaper designer from Cork, Ireland, whose first love is writing. He specialises in horror and ghost stories but is interested in everything from Gothic fiction to science fiction. He has worked in Ireland and the Arabian Gulf, has been a tutor at university, has written opinion pieces for the Irish Examiner on history-related topics, and holds a PhD in history.
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