Sleepless

I am in the middle of a bad period of insomnia. I never used to suffer from insomnia. The only times in life I've had trouble sleeping have been periods when I've been dumped by a boyfriend. I couldn't stop thinking about it at the end of the day and thus couldn't sleep.

This isn't that.

This has come about from the same snowball of crap that has put me on disability again and in one of the deepest depressions of my life. The two surgeries last year messed things up. Bedrest was the best thing for recovering from surgery but the worst thing when it came to fitness. So I got in worse and worse shape. And that starts other painful things like the pyriformis-caused sciatica, restless leg syndrome and others. Which means I have a harder time sleeping and then I start to go out less because I can't find anyplace safe to exercise at night and nighttime is when I'm awake.

I've been having a bad bout of it for at least 2 weeks now. Last night I went to sleep at about 8am. I woke up at 3:30pm today. I went out to the garden and did stuff for the first time in days. Even though my hands are in bad shape and it means that I might not be able to paint or do anything else I'd like/need to do with my hands. But I've been tiring for the last hour or so and may need to go to sleep again. If I sleep through 'til a normal morning wakeup time, that's fine, but that usually doesn't happen. I may wake up at 3am and there I go again.

There's not even anything normal to my rhythms. Sometimes I'm sleeping 3 hours. Others I'm sleeping 6. Every couple of days the tiredness will catch up to me and I'll sleep 12. And then it's more of the fucked-up merry-go-round.

I've got a find a way out of this.

Dos and Don'ts

Good lord. The experience I had going to Oh La Lounge last night, plus my insomnia/depression, plus some reading I've done on the interwubs have me in a funk. I have a terrible time living in the now and all too easily flip back to bad past experiences and worry about the future. Friends and my shrink have warned me about this. I'm trying to change. But let me blurt this out anyway.

A couple of years ago when I was more svelte, I went to a theme party. I love the parties thrown by this group and wish I'd become acquainted with them years earlier. So, anyway, I dressed up according to the theme. The theme/party involved some scavenger hunt-like games, one of which was finding someone to kiss. I was a little more confident than usual since (a) I was more svelte and (b) I'd been dating enough and having casual sex enough to realize that whatever problems I had getting into relationships, it wasn't because I was totally unattractive. Not that I wasn't afraid of rejection. I was. But I hoped that the party atmosphere and the fact that people were hammered would help.

So I asked someone. And he made it clear that there was no way on earth he was going to do it. We're not talking about french kissing here. It could just as well have been a peck on the cheek. No way. Not you, hon.

Well, parties are always dicey for me. I always feel like the ugly one, the uncool kid in class. And now this guy had made it clear that I WAS the uncool one. I gathered my things and got ready to go back home with my tail between my legs. I just hung around long enough to find the one or two acquaintances I knew and cared about at the party and say goodbye.

One of those acquaintances was nice & chatty and we started talking and he relaxed me enough to stay at the party rather than leaving. I was feeling better again. Then the first guy came upstairs and talked with the other one. And the scavenger hunt stuff came up again and it came up that I hadn't fulfilled that part of the scavenger hunt. The first guy "helpfully" suggested that the second guy kiss me. And clearly HE didn't want to, either. Being a master of self-deprecation, I put myself down to take the pressure off the second guy and hopefully forestall him hurting me worse than was already happening. And then I waited a decent interval and drove home desolate.

People say that you should learn to be more assertive. Learn to not be shy about flirting. And not take it personally when you get rejected. I know it's a matter of taste. I'm not attracted to every guy who's ever expressed an attraction to me (all two of them). But there are better ways of handling it. I have *always* tried to be polite and caring in demurring.

The way the first guy made it almost like a dare to the second guy to kiss me was wrong. It put the second guy on the spot and it humiliated me. And, honestly, the fact that the second guy couldn't manage even a peck on the cheek when he was holding my hands and talking to me was pretty shameful. I was good for conversation. I could give a good backrub, but man, I must have been more hideous than Medusa because there was no way someone was going to kiss me.

It's my problem that I'm so bad at letting things roll off my back that when I think about this incident I cry and it's like a flashback. But it's these guys' problem that in the case of the one it's like he went out of his way to rub my face in it and in the case of the other that he couldn't figure out a more graceful way to handle it all.

Don't do that, folks. You really can wound someone for life.