Sunday, at last! The much desired lie-in has been lain in and reluctantly emerged from. Despite getting a number of hours’ sleep on Friday night, I remained pretty fuzzy and mind-fucked for most of the day. I did manage to doze in the car for a few hours on the way down to Bath which felt fairly special. It all helped, but it’s the now weeks-long sleep deficit and brain fog I’m fighting through. I did eventually wake up and become something more like human functional by the time we were able to get into the theatre (the excellent and wonderful Roper Theatre), though then lying on the stage floor in the dark while being bathed in Star Wars music might have been my favourite part. I could definitely have fallen back to sleep in the deafening bass.
That late afternoon / early evening revival is familiar, as if I’m trapped in the slow treacle crawl of the daytime and then freed by the dark. I’ve also been using amitriptyline in various quantities for the last three nights in hopes of being remotely functional for the various things we’ve had to do. It hasn’t been particularly successful except for the important business of actually going to and staying asleep (mostly, though I’m counting being in a hotel room on Thursday as an aggravating factor anyway). I took just one last night with the aim of spinning down into oblivion not long after we returned home just before 1am. If being in a car for most of the day is exhausting I can only imagine how much worse it is to have been the driver (Ben and Phil, I salute you!) I certainly wiped out pretty fast once I was in bed, and promptly slept for the best part of eight or nine hours. It doesn’t really feel like that though.
That said, I have no way of discerning between “tired and still weary from catching up” and “not tired but suffering from an amitriptyline hangover”. They’re very similar. I don’t know what I’m doing now – am I giving the sleeping tablets another go, or trying to stick it out and reserving them for occasional nights where they’ll semi-guarantee sleep but leave me hungover in the morning? I mean, which is worse: exhausted from no sleep or drug-hungover? Coffee will help kick both states into the long grass for a little while, but that feels like I’m just getting jacked up at either end of the day and you’d think I could just do neither… But it doesn’t appear to work like that. Ugh. I’m not sure I’m any better off than I was a month ago when I started this nonsense.
But, beyond all that, how do I actually feel? I enjoyed yesterday; I like hanging out with my friends, even it was a little purposeless spending the afternoon bumbling around Bath. I enjoyed doing the show, despite a disappointingly small audience – but hey, Bath is at the other end of the country and the theatre, although lovely, is more separate and disconnected from the Fringe scene down there than we thought. Gotta try these things, right? I feel quite positive, despite the vague sinking sensation behind my eyes. Also, the burn on my wrist is healing a bit and looks less like a suicide attempt than it did all bandaged up yesterday, which somehow feels better. So – things are good, and this week offers many diversions and things to do, alas with only Tuesday night at home with the fur beasts. Sad face, yet happy face at the things to be done.
