Am I Awake?

You can hear noises: the shrill screaming of your neighbour's 5-year old, the lawnmower down the road, the cars driving past your flat. You can't open your eyes, though. Why can't you open your eyes? You're awake, aren't you?

A typical byproduct of mental illness, especially depression, is troubled sleep. This ranges from insomnia to over-sleeping to everything in-between. Simply put, you don't sleep like everybody else and you haven't done in years.

Today, I woke up at 9am. My alarm went off and, shortly afterwards, my housemate came in to let me know he was off to work. I was drowsy and non-responsive for the most part: I faintly remember groaning and waving a hand to indicate that I'd acknowledged what was going on. Then I fell back to sleep. In the hours following that occurrence, I would regularly 'wake up', except I couldn't open my eyes. I could hear everything around me, I could smell the detergent on my pillowcases (and my terrible morning breath), but I just couldn't bring myself to pull my eyelids back and say "good morning, world!"

This, unfortunately, is a typical day for me. I'm conscious, I can feel that I am, but I cannot wake up. Sometimes, I'm obtusely aware of this and I'm defiantly refusing to get out of bed, usually due to the mindset of 'why should I bother, nothing good will come of me getting up'. Sometimes, I can't control it, and I end up actually getting up hours and hours after my alarm has actually gone off with no recollection of where I am or what's going on.

You might be thinking "isn't that great, though? I always want to get a lay-in!"

It's not great. You're dehydrated, your mouth feels as rough as sandpaper, your eyes feel heavy, your brain throbs as if you've experienced a hundred headaches all at once, you might feel bed sores on your side from where you've been laying down too long, your legs are stiff (maybe even cramped), your stomach feels twisted, you feel sick. 

What some of you might not understand is, like insomnia, over-sleeping has a horrendous effect on your body. You aren't better off because you got more sleep than average: if anything, it produces the same feeling as not sleeping at all. But don't go falling down the WebMD rabbit hole because you'll end up being told that this will give you heart disease and kill you.

So, what's the solution? 

Well, it's complicated. Sleeping varies from person to person. They say eight hours of sleep is the average needed for adults to function, which isn't necessarily true. I know people that function on five hours of sleep per night and function fine, others that require a minimum of ten hours before they can do anything. I personally have found that I need at least ten/eleven hours a day, otherwise I cannot do anything once I'm up or it takes me longer to get things done.

My recommendation, as vanilla as it sounds, is make a routine. Set a time (or a rough estimate) to get into bed, listen to something that's not strenuous on the mind (I listen to rain sounds or a podcast), set multiple alarms to gradually pull you out of your sleep, having a morning ritual (mine isn't healthy but I get up to pee, have a cigarette and make myself a cup of tea).

It doesn't matter if people call you "lazy". You're accommodating for your body and what it needs. When I was a teenager, my family constantly mocked me for sleeping so much, claiming it was something every teen went through: it is, but at the time I was also diagnosed with "dysthymia", which prevented me from being able to get out of bed every day.

Some of us function in the daytime. Some of us are night-owls. Either way, we need sleep in order to reboot ourselves and rest, to gather our energy to be used for the following day: that differs from person to person, especially for those of us that are neurodiverse. There's no shame in going to bed at 6pm or 3am, as long as you're doing it in a way that benefits you. You know your body better than anyone else.

- K