I gave in last night and took 2/3 of my usual sleeping tablet dose to ensure I had a sound night’s sleep for a busy weekend with family. Funny how that feels like a failure because it seems like going backward rather than forward. This is, obviously, a bit silly. I’ve purposely got them as a backup, and taking them or not is entirely up to me – I’m only second guessing myself. It was a considerable relief to lie down and just go to sleep, I must admit. After a five day week with only two nights of sleep I did feel like a form of hammered unlife yesterday. I’m still a little dazed, but that might just be from getting up and racing about to catch a train this morning. Now that we’re on it, everything is fine.
I do hope that the sleeping only on alternate nights which I’ve been treated to this week aren’t going to turn out to be my new sleep routine. I reckon I could handle that if I know it’s going to happen. Then I can make plans and add additional routines, like treating night-time as a spare daytime and starting it with a shower and so on. It doesn’t sound ideal though. Next week I should be entirely without amitriptyline, although I believe it takes a couple of weeks for it to entirely wash out of the system. So that should be interesting… M has found some CBD drops which are supposed to be quite good at replicating the drowsiness of sleeping tablets, with a range of dosages available. I’m going to hold that for a bit. My intention is to get off everything, not simply replace one thing with another. Its why I’m drinking far less over the last couple of weeks – because I could just get drunk and pass out. I feel a need to prove to myself that I can sleep without a tonne of chemical scaffolding. I do like backup plans though…
Having to travel is one of the things that really used to mess up any prospect of sleep. Fretting about having to up at a specific time (plus whatever the thing I was headed for involved) absolutely wrecked my going to sleep and staying asleep. So far, I’ve not experienced that recurrence of anxiety. Maybe I’m fixed! Or maybe I don’t have as much to be anxious about. It’s very hard to tell with so many subjective factors in the mix. Very briefly I was taken on by a modelling/acting agency years ago, but the anxiety about travelling, plus taking random days off work at short notice to attend auditions in London, and worrying about the auditions themselves (never mind worrying about being awake enough to be any good, etc) made it impossible. It was a tremendous relief to then stop it. I never got any actual work out of it anyway, so it cost me far more than any of its minor self-esteem rewards returned. I’m happy that stage performance anxiety faded away something like ten years ago now. Now I mostly worry about whether we’ll have an audience, not about what will happen on stage.
I do get anxious about new things, since I like to exist in a state of perpetual present, in which change has occurred so gradually that it’s been smoothly incorporated in my now without my really noticing it. Same too the re-entry of people and things from former lives. It feels a little foolish, but I do worry about seeing people that I haven’t for a long time. I worry that they or I have changed and we won’t meet whatever expectations we’ve created (having expectations, like “should haves, could haves” is a sure-fire route to disappointment and stress). Invariably however, I’m impressed and delighted when I see folks from whom I’ve been absent for an age; maybe it’s something I should worry about less. Also, that worry, and a host of other self-esteem (like ideas about whether someone would really want to see me anyway – why would I possibly matter to them after having neglected them for so long?) further reduce the likelihood of my reaching out until it’s utterly impossible. It’s quite stupid really. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this now. I suppose I’m aware that I also quite bad at staying in touch even with close family. I get distracted, I have things to do, I just fail at it. Again, it’s stupid because I find being with all of them quite splendid, just like with old friends. My heart lifts (unless there’s something heavier weighing it down) and it makes me happy. Quite why I don’t only do things that make me happy I don’t know. I suppose there are responsibilities and stuff and I have a whole range of other things to do which also make me happy. Clearly I have too many nice things and cannot choose between them, other than by the default of doing the things that are most immediately nearby.