Best intentions

My mind and my family exists to spite me. I'm sure. I've not caught up on my sleep since last Friday, and I've been trying to go to bed earlier, only to toss and turn and wake up exhausted. I even played soccer last night against my better judgement (heel pain still bad) so I could really exhaust myself, and wound up with a migraine instead that kept me up until at least 2am. How's that for justice?

So I was tossing and turning until 2am, and I got up and sent an email into my office to say I'd not be in today. I also left three notes for my husband to NOT wake me up (I was sleeping in the spare room downstairs) and he goes down and wakes me up at 6am anyhow. Didnt even check the notes. Now I can't get back to sleep - its not being helped by him yelling at me from upstairs over what to get for lunch, or where the car keys are.

I'm home becuase I"m not feeling well. I need to sleep. But I can't. Either someone wakes me up or keeps me awake (hence my frequent sleeping in the spare room), or my mind is racing about all the things in my life that are uncertain. The sleeplessness twists and contorts things so that I"m even more anxious, and we're off - the house seems worse than I've ever seen it, my relationship with my husband is as bad as I've ever seen it, and my job is the worst thing in the world. Thats what sleep deprivation does to me. Makes everything look so much worse.

Its been such a joy to have had some sleep lately, over a long period of time, but this past 7 days its been a chore to get sleep. Even with the medication, its just not happening.

I may be getting into a tolerance-withdrawal type situation with my medication, I'm not sure. But I'm not going to take any more, and in fact, I'm trying to cut down. I saw what addiction to these drugs did to my dad six years ago, and I'm not going there. Even now I'm not sure how I'm going to get off them without some kind of medically supported (even hospitalized) approach.

And none of this is helping my self confidence any. I didnt ask for the events of the past year (or years) to come along, and I'm really doing the best I can. I'm a good person, a nice person, a smart person, a dedicated, excellent employee, a great wife and mother, but I think that all of this personal crap is making me look really bad. I think I've paid a great personal price, primarily in the confidence and optimism department for all these things that have always been out of my control.

Work is bothering me a great deal at the moment. I think my professional image started to tank when I was pregnant as I didnt have a very good pregnancy. It didnt help that two others in my office were also pregnant at the same time and seemed to manage the demands of pregnancy and the demands of work with flying colours. I wasn't so lucky. I was so tired, and so stressed about previous pains and abuses and losses in my life and it was culminating in a really strained relationship with my parents and husband at that time, that everything became too much. I also had a lot of pregnancy complications, was very tired, and gained a lot of weight, which didnt help me in the mobility department. I was in a lot of pain a lot of the time. So, as a result, I dont think I portrayed a very professional image, and for that I'm very sad, becuase anyone who knew me prior to the pregnancy who could vouch for my skills and commitment and experience has moved on to another position elsewhere, and I have no idea where the group is headed at the current time. Most people there share the same sentiment about feeling lost and excluded, and the enviroment feels more the proverbial "rats deserting a sinking ship" than the collegial, supportive, invigorating environment that it was when I joined the group in 2002. I think I'm going to have to make a change in that part of my life.

None of what happened to me - to us even (my husband and I that is) - that has made our life difficult was our fault. He didnt ask to be victimized as a child, I didn't ask to be born into an abusive, mental-illness-addiction-ridden household. I didnt ask for my dad to be suicidal, I didnt ask for him to be an addict, I didnt ask for him to have a severe anger problem that he took out on his wife and kids, and I certainly didnt ask for my mom to find him suddenly dead on the couch one morning last November.

But here we are. And it happened. And we're doing the best we can. But most of the time, I think all of us stuck in this spiral of pain - my mom, my brother and my husband, we think that we're not good enough, because we compare ourselves to others who seem to be just able to handle so much more. Others I know seem to manage a family of wonderful children, magnificent careers, a giant house thats always being renovated or decorated in the latest styles, two or three beautiful vehicles (always clean of course), going on fantastic vacations, so many things, when we feel we can barely get through the day most days. Even those in my life who are having troubles of their own seem to be shining in one area of their life - doing well on the career front, or taking time off to care for their child or children full time. Right now I feel like a major incompetent overweight nobody who can't do anything well at all.

So I compare myself, and find yet another thing to feel bad about - this time self-imposed. Or maybe my survival instincts that push me to do that. I think I learned not to expect much from myself and my environment in order to just put up with long-term difficult situations. A kind of "learned helplessness" so to speak. Its a shame that survivors learn to survive by putting ourselves down, when in reality, we all deserve a hero-medal just for being here.

And I wonder why I can't sleep at night.