Month: January 2025

I have suffered from insomnia my entire life.  It is a constant battle to sleep and I spend many nights awake and frustrated even though I am exhausted.

The problem is hereditary but it is also exacerbated by my auto immune disease and currently, by a hormone imbalance, which I am trying to get addressed.

So what have I tried for sleep?

What haven’t I tried?

Every supplement and pill under the sun has passed through my lips in the pursuit of sweet slumber.  Some of them worked for a time and then stopped and some made me so slow and stupid that I have done things like fall down a flight of stairs and break my leg.

The only thing that has even moderately helped lately has been taking Delta 9 (legal marijuana) gummies.  However, there are many problems with this approach:  It doesn’t always knock me out.  Sometimes I am wide awake and I eat shit I have no business eating.

I feel really bad about it when this happens.  It triggers all of my worst fears about weight and about a lack of self control and about drug addiction and about a whole myriad of things. And it irritates the people I live with.  This is embarrassing and painful on top of everything else. And today it has caused them to be angry with me.  I just don’t have the energy to deal with it today.  I feel crushed.

And to top it off, I build up a tolerance to any drug very, very quickly.

There is no exception when it comes to thc. So on a night like last night, and the entire 24 hour period before, I had nothing to take but gummies and I took them until I couldn’t feel anything anymore.  It didn’t matter.  I was still up.  I was just relaxed and I ate everyone’s snacks.  It  was/ is humiliating.

It was 2:00 am and then 4:00 am and 5:00 am and pretty soon it was 8 and I had slept maybe an hour all night: again.  I had moved downstairs to the couch to get away from my husband so I wouldn’t bother him but I bothered him anyway.

Sleep is the dividing line between sanity and depression.

It is the dividing line between health and illness.

And it is the dividing line between me feeling I have any control at all over a life that is mostly out of my control.

Currently, I have been fighting for six weeks to get my infusion medication filled under my new insurance.  I am going in circles.  It seems no matter how hard I try and no matter what string I pull, I am going to end up missing my infusion next week.

When I miss the infusion I start to ache all over.  I have worsening fatigue and I am more open to infection.

All of this is happening right as the semester starts and I go back to work. So, no, I have no control over anything.

I can’t control whether or not I get the medication that keeps me well enough to function.

I can’t control whether or not I sleep at all.

And I can’t seem to control what the fuck I eat when I take gummies with thc, which makes me want to just give them up.

That’s it.

I give up.

 

 

Lyrics from “Defying Gravity”

…I’m through accepting limits
‘Cause someone says they’re so
Some things I cannot change, but ’til I try, I’ll never know
Too long I’ve been afraid of
Losing love, I guess I’ve lost
Well, if that’s love, it comes at much too high a cost…

No, I have not seen the “Wicked” movie yet, but being a musical theater kid I of course know all of the tunes. Who doesn’t want to Defy Gravity!?  Who doesn’t dream of flying?

I have been thinking a lot lately about different ways in which life sets limits on us and how we can chose to defy those limits.  In fact, the movie, “Wicked” is a perfect example.

I wanted to go see the movie as soon as it hit the theaters.  In fact, I wanted to make it an Occasion.  I told you; I am musical theater nerd!  I wanted to make it the dinner -in- the- theater sort of experience, and I planned to dress up in green for Elphaba. Yep, I identify with the green girl that is a little weird!

But none of that happened.  It wasn’t realistic.  I haven’t been in a movie theater since the pandemic.  Going to a movie theater, packed with people and eating and drinking next to them is a recipe for getting sick.  I really cannot  do it and feel smart about it.  Talk about setting limits and being reminded of things I’ve lost!  I really wanted to just ignore reality, leap and  go.

I almost did.

But then I remembered there is no Wizard.  And I am not a real witch.  And I cannot fly everywhere I wish to go.  I am quite literally grounded.

But I can fly with my mind. (I know that sounds strange.)

I can let my spirit fly.  I can soar with music.

I just have defy my own gravity. And by that I mean feeling trapped by my own frailties.  It isn’t always easy. I often feel tired and defeated.  This happens even when I am not suffering through a particularly bad patch, like I did last year with all of the pneumonia, etc.

I don’t like to talk about it but every day is a bit of a struggle with fatigue and pills and insurance, and  doctors and insurance,etc. and it gets very old.

But I can choose to defy my feelings of being limited just because my body is trying to make it so.  I can make my life have meaning and I can fight the fatigue and the depression it sometimes brings by giving of myself to others and standing outside of my own needs, lest I become too inwardly focused.

And I can always remember that there is a power greater than myself that I believe connects each and every one of us in the universe into a whole.  I find great comfort in that because it means that no matter how small and inconsequential and alone I feel: I am actually not alone.  For me, that connection, G-d, reminds me that who and what we are is so much more than these frail shells we walk around in.

Maybe, one day… I can defy gravity.

Maybe, one day… I will fly.

But until then, I will: write my, sing my, love my, walk my way away from everything that brings me down.