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Don't get me wrong, I am deeply grateful to my sister for being willing and able to take the bus from the train station in D up to the transit center here. It means I have to be awake enough to drive at 8.30 instead of 5.30. I'll take it. And I will be eternally grateful to her. But I still have to be awake at 8.30. (Arguably, I have to be awake at 7, which is when the train arrives and I will have to be at least conscious of text updates from K.) And that there is Prime Sleeping Hours.
And there comes a point in any night like this, every night when I have to be awake in the morning, where I look at the clock and count on my fingers how many hours of sleep are Possible at this juncture, minus the time it will take me to actually fall asleep, and I stare at the clock and just kind of go, "fuck it."
...
I survived the entirety of high school on five or less hour of sleep.
Bear in mind, of course, that teenagers are supposed to get the most sleep of all the age groups other than literal babies because growing and developing, blah, blah, blah, and my body spent four years protesting loudly about the fact that it wanted ten hours of sleep and was only getting a regular four or five. And I fully own the fact that I did not handle it well. I was a cranky, tired bitch in the mornings and no one liked me before third period. I didn't like me before third period. But orchestra was at 7, which meant I had to leave to drive to school by 6:20, which meant I had to be awake by 5:30. And rehearsal (or volleyball, or tech, or WYSE, or what-the-fuck-ever I stretched myself too thin for so that I could stay at school longer) didn't let out until either 5 or 6. Which meant I didn't eat dinner until 7, and then still had to do all that goddamned AP homework. My goal was to be in bed by 11. I was lucky if I got to sleep by midnight. And god forbid I have to squeeze a shower in there somewhere. Or laundry or dishes or any other chores.
In short, I was an absolute mess for all of high school. But the only time a teacher took me aside for a Serious Chat, it was the orchestra director who told me that the other girls had complained that I was mean to them in the mornings. To which I looked at him and just laughed.
"Yeah, I suck in the mornings," I said, "but there is literally nothing I can do about it."
"To put it bluntly, the flute section hates you."
"Well, if they'd shut up and play when you tell them to, I'd be way less inclined to glare at them. I just want to play music. They just want to talk. If they don't want to be here, they can leave."
"You know, if you don't want to be here, you can also leave."
Listen, I was very good friends with my music teacher. He wasn't perfect, and good lord did he play favorites, but he was gentle and kind and genuinely cared about his students and the music he got to lead us through. So even though a lot of my childhood memories are very hazy and fogged up with sleep deprivation, I clearly, clearly remember the time that he told me that if I couldn't get my shit together and sleep more, I would have to quit orchestra. "You need to sleep later, and I can't reschedule the whole orchestra for you. Or you need to be nicer."
That is the one and only time anyone in my entire life has told me to be nicer.
Everyone is a little bit of an asshole, yeah, but I've always managed to keep my assholery in check. Private. On the inside. So everyone thinks I'm infinitely nicer and sweeter than I actually am. And--I am nice and sweet. I would much rather be kind to people than anything else. It's so much easier for me to be kind. But there is a little rotten corner of me that's a cranky, whiny bitch. I manage to keep her hidden and quiet most of the time, but the more tired I am, the less energy I have to contain her. And I am always deeply. Deeply. tired in the mornings.
So yeah, the choir loved me, because that was, like, sixth period, but most of the girls in the orchestra hated my guts, and I do not blame them.
...
I really don't know where I'm going with this. I think it's just Story Time because I won't fall asleep until 5. To be fair, not all blog posts need to have a destination. They can, in fact, just be Story Time.
...
I got better at containing my inner bitch in college. I was mega-depressed--dangerously so--but I had to keep doing adult things, like go to class and write papers and eat food. I mostly had to because other people made me--my sister, my roommate, my best friend. My favorite two professors. Despite how godawful I felt all of the time, despite how tired and drained I was, despite how very much I did not want to be There Anymore, a larger, more aggressive part of me didn't want to let any of those people down. I didn't want to disappoint them. And I didn't want anyone to say that I couldn't hack it. So I dragged my ass around campus like a stoned zombie, but I did it. And every time I had to interact with other humans, what little dignity still resided in a dusty corner of my brain screamed at me that the other humans couldn't KNOW I was a stoned zombie. they had to think I was also a human being!!
So I got really good at pretending.
Pretending I wasn't depressed, pretending I wasn't cranky, pretending I wasn't tired, pretending I wasn't that little bit of a bitch.
There's all this...discourse online, all these posts, about how if you tell yourself something enough times, you start to change your thought patterns and they become true. Fake it 'til you make it, but an actual mindfulness practice for mental illness management. If you make fewer "jokes" about wanting to die, you are less likely to want to die. If you say nice things about yourself, you are more likely to have higher self-esteem. These are proven things that happen, you can rewire your brain with enough effort. And, often, anti-depressants and therapy.
That never happened to me. Probably because I didn't have the anti-depressants or the therapy. I didn't have the conjunction of aids and modern medicine, I just had the bullshit mindfulness, faking it until I made it, but one out of three ain't good. It ain't bad, but it ain't good. So I was pretending and pretending as hard as I could, I was masking and acting 100%, all out, every time I was with other people. Other people included my roommate. Which meant I was On Stage pretty much constantly, and the only time I got to drop my mask was a.) in the shower, b.) walking alone around campus, and c.) at night after my roommate went to sleep but before I did.
So I stayed up way too late because I treasured that extremely precious time when I didn't have to be acting. And I wanted to extend it as long as possible. To the detriment of my sleep. Which, of course, fed into the depression and the exhaustion. So the less sleep I got, the harder I had to act, and the more I didn't sleep because I was trying to squeeze in time that I didn't have to act, which meant I was sleeping less, which meant---
It was a really bad cycle. An ouroboros of awful. I was constantly eating my own tail and smiling around the mouthfuls with my teeth clamped shut so no one would notice.
But! I did get really good at acting like nothing was wrong. (This has historically been counted as The Only Positive Side Effect of College, but more recent research is emerging to prove it is: Unhealthy.) (Listen, when I say I Did College Wrong, this is what I'm talking about. I mean, I'm also talking about studying the wrong things and going to the wrong school, but mostly this.)
And because I was so good at acting like nothing was wrong, all-nighters became the default.
And my brain hated me. And it's really only in the last few years (hi, anti-depressants!) that I've started making a very conscious effort to pretend less. It feels a lot like ripping off my own scalp with my broken fingernails or carving out my own innards with a rusty spoon, but I'm doing it. I really, really am trying. And I do think I'm getting better at it. It helps that I've been feeling less Terrible and therefore have less to pretend about. (again, hi, anti-depressants! I love you!)
But every once in a while, I find myself staring down the barrel of an all-nighter (sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose. Sometimes because it's just easier to Not Sleep than it is to try to get two broken hours before my alarm rips though my consciousness.) and I remember that there's a little bitch inside me that I can't lose control of. And I pull the mask back on and get into character and I get up on stage and I stand there, under the lights, trying to be nicer, trying not to complain, trying to be my normal, afternoon, enough-sleep self, and I just... regress to college and slip into it easy as breathing.
...
Lisa and Katie are both really bad at all-nighters, or even just less sleep than they normally get. They get hella cranky, anxious about everything, and lose the ability to function at their normal capacity. They are tired and everyone knows it. They can't get anything done. Work is a chore. They are unproductive. They leave the chores for tomorrow.
You know, the sort of things that happen to normal people who don't get enough sleep.
Meanwhile, even if I've only gotten an hour (or none), I'm still trying my best to be my peppy, normal, productive self. I might be quieter or say "I'm tired" more out loud than I normally do, but I generally succeed in pretending that nothing is wrong. I've had a lot of practice. I'm very good at it. Lisa has commented that she can only tell I haven't gotten enough sleep because I look a little droopier. She told me once that she's impressed that I can still function on so little sleep, when she gets leveled like a building by anything less than her solid, glorious eight hours.
I don't think it's impressive. I think it's sad.
The thing is that no one should have to function like normal when they haven't gotten enough sleep. That shouldn't be a requirement! No one should be out here trying to go through their normal high-energy day when they've only had three hours of sleep! There should be exceptions, there should be protocols in place, we should have built in fucking nap time like the Spanish for anyone who crashes after lunch. But capitalism. We have to be productive all the time. We can't have a single day where we're a stoned zombie. We have to be a human being every day.
And I think it's really depressing that I've learned how to do that.
I faked it until I made it, I guess, but I think I learned the wrong lesson. I faked the wrong thing. And unlearning it all is a bitch.
...
Anyway, all this to say that I have to be awake in three hours and driving in four(ish), and I'm not even worried. I know that I will be fine. I will be completely normal. I will yawn a few more times and look a little droopier, but I'll be totally, 100% fine. On less than three hours of sleep.
No one should have to do that. No one should have learned that skill--that's not a skill, that's a shittyass coping mechanism that is not healthy.
But here I am.
And there comes a point in any night like this, every night when I have to be awake in the morning, where I look at the clock and count on my fingers how many hours of sleep are Possible at this juncture, minus the time it will take me to actually fall asleep, and I stare at the clock and just kind of go, "fuck it."
...
I survived the entirety of high school on five or less hour of sleep.
Bear in mind, of course, that teenagers are supposed to get the most sleep of all the age groups other than literal babies because growing and developing, blah, blah, blah, and my body spent four years protesting loudly about the fact that it wanted ten hours of sleep and was only getting a regular four or five. And I fully own the fact that I did not handle it well. I was a cranky, tired bitch in the mornings and no one liked me before third period. I didn't like me before third period. But orchestra was at 7, which meant I had to leave to drive to school by 6:20, which meant I had to be awake by 5:30. And rehearsal (or volleyball, or tech, or WYSE, or what-the-fuck-ever I stretched myself too thin for so that I could stay at school longer) didn't let out until either 5 or 6. Which meant I didn't eat dinner until 7, and then still had to do all that goddamned AP homework. My goal was to be in bed by 11. I was lucky if I got to sleep by midnight. And god forbid I have to squeeze a shower in there somewhere. Or laundry or dishes or any other chores.
In short, I was an absolute mess for all of high school. But the only time a teacher took me aside for a Serious Chat, it was the orchestra director who told me that the other girls had complained that I was mean to them in the mornings. To which I looked at him and just laughed.
"Yeah, I suck in the mornings," I said, "but there is literally nothing I can do about it."
"To put it bluntly, the flute section hates you."
"Well, if they'd shut up and play when you tell them to, I'd be way less inclined to glare at them. I just want to play music. They just want to talk. If they don't want to be here, they can leave."
"You know, if you don't want to be here, you can also leave."
Listen, I was very good friends with my music teacher. He wasn't perfect, and good lord did he play favorites, but he was gentle and kind and genuinely cared about his students and the music he got to lead us through. So even though a lot of my childhood memories are very hazy and fogged up with sleep deprivation, I clearly, clearly remember the time that he told me that if I couldn't get my shit together and sleep more, I would have to quit orchestra. "You need to sleep later, and I can't reschedule the whole orchestra for you. Or you need to be nicer."
That is the one and only time anyone in my entire life has told me to be nicer.
Everyone is a little bit of an asshole, yeah, but I've always managed to keep my assholery in check. Private. On the inside. So everyone thinks I'm infinitely nicer and sweeter than I actually am. And--I am nice and sweet. I would much rather be kind to people than anything else. It's so much easier for me to be kind. But there is a little rotten corner of me that's a cranky, whiny bitch. I manage to keep her hidden and quiet most of the time, but the more tired I am, the less energy I have to contain her. And I am always deeply. Deeply. tired in the mornings.
So yeah, the choir loved me, because that was, like, sixth period, but most of the girls in the orchestra hated my guts, and I do not blame them.
...
I really don't know where I'm going with this. I think it's just Story Time because I won't fall asleep until 5. To be fair, not all blog posts need to have a destination. They can, in fact, just be Story Time.
...
I got better at containing my inner bitch in college. I was mega-depressed--dangerously so--but I had to keep doing adult things, like go to class and write papers and eat food. I mostly had to because other people made me--my sister, my roommate, my best friend. My favorite two professors. Despite how godawful I felt all of the time, despite how tired and drained I was, despite how very much I did not want to be There Anymore, a larger, more aggressive part of me didn't want to let any of those people down. I didn't want to disappoint them. And I didn't want anyone to say that I couldn't hack it. So I dragged my ass around campus like a stoned zombie, but I did it. And every time I had to interact with other humans, what little dignity still resided in a dusty corner of my brain screamed at me that the other humans couldn't KNOW I was a stoned zombie. they had to think I was also a human being!!
So I got really good at pretending.
Pretending I wasn't depressed, pretending I wasn't cranky, pretending I wasn't tired, pretending I wasn't that little bit of a bitch.
There's all this...discourse online, all these posts, about how if you tell yourself something enough times, you start to change your thought patterns and they become true. Fake it 'til you make it, but an actual mindfulness practice for mental illness management. If you make fewer "jokes" about wanting to die, you are less likely to want to die. If you say nice things about yourself, you are more likely to have higher self-esteem. These are proven things that happen, you can rewire your brain with enough effort. And, often, anti-depressants and therapy.
That never happened to me. Probably because I didn't have the anti-depressants or the therapy. I didn't have the conjunction of aids and modern medicine, I just had the bullshit mindfulness, faking it until I made it, but one out of three ain't good. It ain't bad, but it ain't good. So I was pretending and pretending as hard as I could, I was masking and acting 100%, all out, every time I was with other people. Other people included my roommate. Which meant I was On Stage pretty much constantly, and the only time I got to drop my mask was a.) in the shower, b.) walking alone around campus, and c.) at night after my roommate went to sleep but before I did.
So I stayed up way too late because I treasured that extremely precious time when I didn't have to be acting. And I wanted to extend it as long as possible. To the detriment of my sleep. Which, of course, fed into the depression and the exhaustion. So the less sleep I got, the harder I had to act, and the more I didn't sleep because I was trying to squeeze in time that I didn't have to act, which meant I was sleeping less, which meant---
It was a really bad cycle. An ouroboros of awful. I was constantly eating my own tail and smiling around the mouthfuls with my teeth clamped shut so no one would notice.
But! I did get really good at acting like nothing was wrong. (This has historically been counted as The Only Positive Side Effect of College, but more recent research is emerging to prove it is: Unhealthy.) (Listen, when I say I Did College Wrong, this is what I'm talking about. I mean, I'm also talking about studying the wrong things and going to the wrong school, but mostly this.)
And because I was so good at acting like nothing was wrong, all-nighters became the default.
And my brain hated me. And it's really only in the last few years (hi, anti-depressants!) that I've started making a very conscious effort to pretend less. It feels a lot like ripping off my own scalp with my broken fingernails or carving out my own innards with a rusty spoon, but I'm doing it. I really, really am trying. And I do think I'm getting better at it. It helps that I've been feeling less Terrible and therefore have less to pretend about. (again, hi, anti-depressants! I love you!)
But every once in a while, I find myself staring down the barrel of an all-nighter (sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose. Sometimes because it's just easier to Not Sleep than it is to try to get two broken hours before my alarm rips though my consciousness.) and I remember that there's a little bitch inside me that I can't lose control of. And I pull the mask back on and get into character and I get up on stage and I stand there, under the lights, trying to be nicer, trying not to complain, trying to be my normal, afternoon, enough-sleep self, and I just... regress to college and slip into it easy as breathing.
...
Lisa and Katie are both really bad at all-nighters, or even just less sleep than they normally get. They get hella cranky, anxious about everything, and lose the ability to function at their normal capacity. They are tired and everyone knows it. They can't get anything done. Work is a chore. They are unproductive. They leave the chores for tomorrow.
You know, the sort of things that happen to normal people who don't get enough sleep.
Meanwhile, even if I've only gotten an hour (or none), I'm still trying my best to be my peppy, normal, productive self. I might be quieter or say "I'm tired" more out loud than I normally do, but I generally succeed in pretending that nothing is wrong. I've had a lot of practice. I'm very good at it. Lisa has commented that she can only tell I haven't gotten enough sleep because I look a little droopier. She told me once that she's impressed that I can still function on so little sleep, when she gets leveled like a building by anything less than her solid, glorious eight hours.
I don't think it's impressive. I think it's sad.
The thing is that no one should have to function like normal when they haven't gotten enough sleep. That shouldn't be a requirement! No one should be out here trying to go through their normal high-energy day when they've only had three hours of sleep! There should be exceptions, there should be protocols in place, we should have built in fucking nap time like the Spanish for anyone who crashes after lunch. But capitalism. We have to be productive all the time. We can't have a single day where we're a stoned zombie. We have to be a human being every day.
And I think it's really depressing that I've learned how to do that.
I faked it until I made it, I guess, but I think I learned the wrong lesson. I faked the wrong thing. And unlearning it all is a bitch.
...
Anyway, all this to say that I have to be awake in three hours and driving in four(ish), and I'm not even worried. I know that I will be fine. I will be completely normal. I will yawn a few more times and look a little droopier, but I'll be totally, 100% fine. On less than three hours of sleep.
No one should have to do that. No one should have learned that skill--that's not a skill, that's a shittyass coping mechanism that is not healthy.
But here I am.
