Insomnia

Simple title, very annoying issue.

I'd imagine it's a little like the madness of being caught in Flatland, understanding something more but being largely unable to articulate it, much to the frustration and annoyance of yourself and everyone around you.

It's after nine in the morning. I know this because I have yet to fall asleep. The reason for this is partially my own fault (as in, not shutting my computer, watching a movie, reading an entire book, etc. when I was meant to be asleep) and partially out of my control (I have too many half-formed pans in my head and I lack both the follow-through to complete and the inner-peace to let rest for another day, I'm distractingly hungry but I have no desire to eat, achingly tired but there's a certain guilt attached to sleeping at this hour of the day which makes it even more difficult to shut off my brain.)

And basically, when it comes right down to it, I don't want to sleep because I'm tried; I want to sleep to shut out the world. Example, I know my messed up sleep schedule annoys my mother. If I'm asleep, I don't have to think about how much I'm annoying her (currently, in my mind, just by virtue of the fact that I exist). Until I wake back up, that is, at which point the cycle just starts all over again, namely: I've slept all day, meaning that I am once again not tired when it's turns night, meaning that I'm unlikely to be able to sleep over the course of the night, meaning that I'm once again up too late and feeling like a hack and a failure for doing nothing of value.

I realize that recovery of any sort is not a strict linear progression from 'ill' to 'well' but rather it contains all manner of backslides and inconvenient stretches in which is perfectly impossible to do anything you feel is useful in the slightest. This includes writing a coherent sentence of fiction, making any money at all, living up to your own laughably low goals, hell - even keeping up with my friends is a chore for me right now. Do you know why it takes me so long to get out of bed in the morning? It's not that kind of pale laziness that afflicts all school-aged children in one form or another - it's the paralyzing weight of unknowing that I can't seem to avoid nor decouple from an intense desire to simply lie there and doze and think (about the physics of higher dimensions, about the inherent difficulties in attempting to guide a larger society into acceptance of outliers as an essential part of the human experience, about the strange nebulous thing that is authorship, about the idea that I as a human being have the right to define my own experiences and insist on being made comfortable just as everyone else, about the weird and wonderful thing that is conlangs, anything).

All of this giving the completely understandable outward appearance of laziness (or possibly depression, depending on your reading), but I might argue that it's more a kind of... ugh, what's the word?

It's a kind of vicious cycle wherein everything (misspellings, simple noises, etc.) is unduly annoying and this feeds an ongoing inner monologue I seem to have acquired which makes it very clear that, regardless of what my time is spent doing, it is always wasted.

This makes some sense if I've been watching a movie when I could/should have been working. Yes, in all cases the movie was educational for me, but that won't cover the 70 bucks a month I owe until, like, May... sadly. It also gets nothing written, which hinders me even more because being unable to write is a strange and kind of sickly feeling - it's a bit like feeling a talent for a thing you often find so much joy in being slowly drained from you, as though some vast and uncaring part of the universe perceived it as venom welling in a wound and elected to remove it on a whim.

As a result, I remain in this little admittedly comfortable room, thinking in circles and becoming increasingly annoyed by my complete inability to function like a 'normal' person. Yes, I know, I should be focused far more on working within my limits rather than breaking my hands on the walls attempting to get through them (because, spoiler: that never works), but what happens when your supposed 'recovery' hits a stretch where you're perpetually 'out of spoons'? It's difficult to do anything when all you feel capable of focusing on at the moment is thinking, sleep, and possibly eating enough to avoid death.

In the long run, it may be better to roll with these moments and just know that they'll pass (and probably quicker if you'd stop stressing) but some part of my brain always starts jumping up and down with 'That's not good enough and you're an utter joke of a human being.' And that wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for that other part that always stands up and says 'I agree.'

Basically, it's all a rich tapestry of self-imposed guilt, an easily angered and overwhelmed self, complex issues of gender/sexuality/creativity and my relationship not only to the works of others but to others themselves that just can't be answered quickly, a complicated relationship with my place in the world both as part of the GSM and as an artist, and probably some manner of internalized ablism. I feel it's safe to say that all of this is currently contributing to the surprising lack of both focus and give-a-damn.

That's basically what's been on my mind lately. And that's why I didn't sleep last night.

I'm still not sure what to do about that.