Jump to content

I Prefer the Insomnia

I am no stranger to sleeping problems. I first developed insomnia when I was 16, and a couple of years ago I found out that my cortisol levels are backwards. They’re high when they should be low and low when they should be high which is why I’m exhausted in the morning and get one hell of a second wind at 10 pm. If I had complete control over my schedule, I would go to sleep at 3 am and wake up at 11 am. As I do not have complete control over my schedule, and we’re getting closer but haven’t yet fixed the cortisol problem, I do not take a good night’s sleep for granted. But of all of the issues I have with sleeping, I’ve always been grateful of the fact, that my problem is never a racing a mind. I’m either wide-ass awake with brain functioning normally, or I’m asleep. Being wide awake when you’re trying to sleep is bad enough, so I can’t imagine the hell of being exhausted but unable to get your brain to wind down.

Portrait of an insomniac man trying to sleep in his bed

But as they say, all good things must come to an end. I got a taste of this last night. Not the full-on anxiety brain, I had OCD brain. On Sunday, my laptop decided that it wanted to freeze up, never to work again. Yesterday it got sent out, likely for a new hard drive, which meant that I had lost all of the work that I’d done on Sunday. Argh!!!!! I need to finish my novel, and to do that I need my laptop, and I need to keep work that I’ve done, not lose it! Talk about feeling helpless and having zero control over something . . . cue my OCD. I couldn’t control what was happening with my laptop, so my brain decided to control everything else around me.

I immediately mapped out the rest of my evening in order to complete an extensive list of things on my to-do list.

  • Stop by CVS, use coupon to buy birthday card.
  • Stop by the store to pick up some forgotten groceries. Get exactly what I was missing, nothing less, nothing more.
  • Take dogs out.
  • Start my laundry.
  • Cook my dinner.
  • Prep potatoes while my dinner cooks.
  • Eat my dinner.
  • Cook potatoes while I eat my dinner.
  • Move my laundry over.
  • Pull out potatoes and let cool.
  • Cook scrambled eggs and add the rest of the breakfast burrito ingredients while the potatoes cool.
  • Assemble 8 breakfast burritos and wrap them up for the freezer.
  • Put burritos in freezer and put away leftover ingredients.
  • Fetch laundry from laundry room.
  • Grab ingredients and assemble two pepperoni pizzas, wrap them up for the freezer.
  • Put pizzas in the freezer and put away leftover ingredients.
  • Chat with roommate – this wasn’t on the original schedule.
  • Fold laundry.
  • Do a sink-full of dishes.
  • Realize that while the water is dirty, there’s still room in the drying rack for more dishes.
  • Run more water and do another sink-full of dishes.
  • Strip and remake bed.
  • Take dogs out.
  • Get ready for bed.
  • Lie in bed thinking about the fact that while I folded my laundry, I didn’t put my laundry away which needs to be done. Then think about the fact that the dishes I did earlier should be dry by now, and thus can be put away making room to do the remaining dishes. And the counters and oven really need to a good scrubbing, and hey I can use that new spray I got!
  • Start to get out of bed to do the aforementioned tasks.

It was at this point that I caught a glimpse of the time on my alarm clock, and realized my OCD had kicked in. I am not usually this productive after work. Especially when my evening starts out by spending an hour at the Apple Genius bar. But as I sat on the edge of my bed, taking deep breaths and trying to re-center myself, it occurred to me that I hadn’t wanted to do that second sink-full of dishes. I had simply been incapable of walking away until the precarious tower of Tetris-ed drying dishes was such that the addition of a single spoon would have sent the whole thing toppling down. I then reminded myself that while I always wash and fold my laundry on Monday, I generally put it away on Tuesday. So no, that didn’t need to be done at 2 in the frickin morning.

Go to bed

My entire evening had been driven by a NEED to clean, organize and plan the world around me. I had been working in such a frenzy, that my normally snuggle-tastic dogs were curled up on my bed against the wall so that they weren’t touching me. Honestly, I think they were afraid I was going to throw them in the bathtub and scrub them down if they made their presence conspicuous. Which I might have, so well played puggles. Even with the knowledge of what was going on in my head, it took another half an hour lying in bed wide awake to convince myself that I had done enough for the evening, and like the proverbial mouse with his cookie, if I got up to do just one more thing, I would literally be up all night. Ooof! So long story short, I feel for those of you with anxiety, because the racing thoughts thing sucks!

OCD – Not Necessarily a Bad Thing

Last December my company had its annual holiday dinner, and since the restaurant was near my house a couple of co-workers came over to get ready. For whatever reason, I don’t remember what, I mentioned that I have OCD. Unlike the other mental illnesses that I have, no one ever seems to believe me on this one. I don’t think people think I’m lying or anything, but “I’m OCD” gets bandied about as a joke so commonly by people who aren’t, that it’s hard to imagine that someone actually has it. So when I actually show symptoms people are surprised, as is what happened with my coworker.

That night at dinner we were seated next to each other and she happened to look over and see my plate right as I was finishing organizing my food so that there was a piece of chicken paired up with a proportionately sized piece of potato all neatly lined up. I was so engrossed in this task I didn’t even realize she was looking at me until she said, “Wow, you really do have OCD.” It cracked me up. Hadn’t I just told her that I did? Then came the inevitable question, “So do you have to wash your hands three times, or check the stove multiple times, or anything like that?”

ocd

No, that’s not how my OCD manifests. Okay, that’s a little bit of a lie. I always grab three paper towels to dry my hands in public restrooms. Doesn’t matter if two is enough, I inevitably grab that third one. I can’t stop myself. But other than that my thing isn’t counting; it’s organizing. If it can be alphabetized, it is. If it can be color-coded, it is. If it can be sorted by size or shape, it is. If it can be alphabetized, color-coded and sorted by size or shape I am one happy camper!

As a child, this was how I coped with having no control on the rest of my surroundings. My bedroom was the epitome of the saying, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” If my sister walked in and moved something even half an inch, I knew it and I had to fix it. One time when I was at camp my mom and her friend thought they would be nice and cleaned up my trolls for me – I had over 200. The problem was that they were organized into a troll village that took up over half of my room. I hadn’t left them out, I had left them in their respective homes. So when I got home and saw that all of this had been “cleaned-up,” I lost my shit – like yelling, crying, furiously working to get it all back in place lost my shit. I wouldn’t eat or sleep until I got it back to normal.

This was the worst that I ever got, which is admittedly pretty bad. But as I got older and got my compulsions under control I started to swing in the opposite direction out of fear that I would get compulsive again. Even if it bothered me, I wouldn’t allow myself to organize everything. My desk had to be cluttered. Or my nightstand. Something had to be out of order to prove to myself that I was better. That I didn’t need everything to be perfect. It wasn’t until last year that I finally realized I was doing this. That was also when I realized that OCD aside, I am more content as a person when things are neat and organized. So I organized my desk, and amazingly the world didn’t end, nor did I fall back into harmful compulsive behaviors. Whoo! Instead, I realized that I can use my OCD to my benefit. I’m going to England for vacation and food might become an issue at times because I have so many food allergies. So much to my little OCD heart’s delight, I made a baggie of snacks for each day that I will be gone, taking into account the activities of the day, my sweet tooth, and penchant for low-blood sugar.

snacks

Nailed it!