Hey, look at me blogging again. Now this is what I call commitment.
It's easy to post another blog so soon since I didn't work today. I happen to be one of the lucky ones who actually loves going to work. There are of course days when my desire to stay in bed or my brain is exploding with a list of due-today tasks when I'd rather not go to work, but I'm always happy when I arrive and often look forward to it.
I didn't sleep at all last night. This is the first time in a very long time this occurrence has plagued me, but the familiar anxiety came rushing back as if it were once again a frequent issue. I've had trouble sleeping since I was a kid. I've always had a lot of anxiety surrounding the topic of sleep, since there was a notable period of time during which I didn't understand what happens to one's body while sleeping. I remember laying awake at night going back as far as I can remember, blinking with purpose and trying desperately to do what everyone else seemed to do so easily. I was always the only one awake (except of course when I was a baby and would scream through the night, proving my dad obviously did something very wrong in a past life), and for hours I would stare at the ceiling failing to understand why I seemed to be the only person who didn't know how to sleep. For awhile I was afraid to go to sleep because I didn't understand how I could close my eyes and wake up after hours had passed with no recollection of any events in between. I was afraid I was dying and then coming back to life. I was scared that one morning I wouldn't wake up.
This anxiety carried on into my adulthood. Not because I currently think I die and come back to life over the course of the night, but rather because I never knew when a bout of insomnia would strike. Without fail I would blame myself for my inability to sleep. I drank too much caffeine that day. I didn't turn off the TV when I should have. I tried to turn off the TV, but I wasn't tired yet and laid there bored out of my mind for a good long while and eventually caved and turned it back on. Then I'd berate myself for giving in to TV watching. Then as every minute ticked by I would fret over what this would mean for the upcoming day. Would I be able to function? Was my day going to be completely ruined? Was I going to manage to make it through the day at all since I always had more commitments lined up for me than most adults had three times over? What could I have done to prevent this? What did I do wrong? Why can't I sleep like everyone else? The minutes would tick by and with every passing digital number these thoughts would snowball and I'd find myself immobilized, frustrated, and hating myself. The worst part was knowing that even though I hadn't managed to so much as doze off throughout the night, it was entirely likely, in spite of my immeasurable exhaustion, that I would probably be staring at the clock through another lonely, quiet night by myself.
Then one day a miracle happened. I was diagnosed with OCD. I'm not being facetious, this diagnosis is arguably the best thing that's ever happened to me. When you're diagnosed with OCD your Fairy Goddoctor appears and writes you prescriptions for magic pills. Before you start calling in the local Prescription-Drug Addict Anonymous chapter, I'll assure you that the medicine I've been taking for over a year now has changed my life so much for the better I can't describe the relief with enough specificity to make it worth attempting to explain. I know many people can relate to the epiphany that comes with discovering, as a wise friend eloquently articulated, that you haven't been "playing with a full deck", at ANY point in your life. There's a great relief in realizing that you have been doing the best you can with what you had, and that it's not the status quo to feel like a slave to rituals, obsess over gruesome images and terrifying scenarios, have to count while staring at evidence in order to fully accept that a task has been completed, to be completely paralyzed by fear when faced with the necessary task of confronting an uncomfortable, awkward, or volatile situation because you're afraid if challenged you'll fall apart and burst into tears because you can't handle rejection. OCD is not an uncommon disorder, and I'm willing to bet at least a few of you reading this want to jump through your computer monitor and shake me yelling "Yes! Yes! My WHOLE LIFE I've felt this way and experienced the same or very similar thoughts and felt controlled by actions I've felt forced to perform without any sense of reason or logic!" At least that's what I was screaming in my head throughout my research which eventually led to my seeking medical help. In spite of the depths of my research and accumulating knowledge on the subject of anxiety disorders, I still continue to be amazed that I was able to function from day to day. I never want to work that hard again.
The magic pills entered into my world at an eerily appropriate time. I was cognitively aware that I had hit rock bottom, but unlike many people who find themselves drowning in depression, I don't hide under the covers with the shades drawn and leave my phone unanswered. I do just the opposite by grasping frantically for a connection to anything I can, as if I'm drowning and floundering to keep from sinking to the bottom. I go into hyperactive overdrive, tirelessly searching for an escape route in the form of a life challenge and redefined purpose with an untiring determination to prove I'm not what I'm afraid I'll become. My career, identity, and pubic acceptance hang by a thread and I need to fix it before anyone finds out it's all about to come crashing down. If my life was the Berlin Wall I'd be running around frantically with a bottle of superglue believing wholeheartedly that I can put the pieces back to together before the wall is entirely dismantled, and all the while people are squeezing through the cracks, finally getting an impressionable glimpse of what life's been like on the other side.
I take Zoloft for my OCD paired with Trazodone as a sleep aide. The Trazodone has, in addition to providing me predictable and consistent sleep for the first time in my life, obliterated a prominent source of worry and dread I've spent my life trying to conquer. All is well and good in Anna's Happy Land of controversial, mind-altering, societal-numbing pill consumption. So why couldn't I sleep last night? I was out of pills.
For once I could not unabashedly point my accusatory finger at Rite Aid, but goddamn I wanted to. The responsibility for the missing refill objectively lies on me, but the persistent domino effect of careless, inattentive, unprofessional customer service for which I 've created a mental voodoo doll which I stab relentlessly with an oversized butcher knife had a lot to do with the mixup.
I knew as soon as I was unable to locate any spare or leftover pills there was a very good chance I wouldn't be sleeping before morning. I gave it my best try, but sleep aides, even when taken under the most legitimate and controlled of circumstances, are habit forming. You have to wean yourself off, as in "I don't have to do anything tomorrow, so tonight would be a good night to risk a sleepless night in hopes that I'll be able to fall asleep on my own the following evening". But when I suddenly don't have any pills at 2am and have to work at 9:30 the next morning I find myself in the familiar panic I've been fortunate to be free of for over a year.
I've spent most of the day frustrated with myself, going over and over in my head all the ways this situation could have been prevented. I knew I should have double checked my purchase over the course of the days which I meticulously allowed to steer clear of any further issue with the pharmacy from hell. I often don't know if the nagging voice insisting on the completion of neurotic tasks is a product of my OCD (even at a daily dose of 200mg I still struggle, but not in any way close to where I was prior to treatment), or if it's my gut preemptively signaling a potential problem. I'd like to proclaim that I will now take control and let it go by halting the cycle of recurring thoughts and what-if's, but the truth is I will continue to weave in and out of recounting recent events until I have slept and tomorrow returns to my version of normal.
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