I was asked to blog about my up-all-night-ness, so here it is.
Mania hit me over the holiday weekend but it didn't register until yesterday. Last night, I was busy blogging and The Husband kept asking me to watch a movie or a TV show with him. I said yes, and I meant it, but I was so focused on writing my blogs, that it kept getting later and later. We didn't settle in to watch TV until after 10:30. And then we stayed up till 12:30 watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix.
I told him before we started the TV that I had mania and I would be up a few hours. And up I was. I managed to sweep the floors, mop them all on my hands & knees with a bucket of cleaning solution & a washcloth, take down the Christmas tree, clean the living room (minus vacuuming because it's too loud at night), and clean the kitchen. Since The Roomie has a flip-flopped sleep schedule for now, we chatted all night. He paced while I cleaned and we talked about how we left the JWs and how he ended up moving in with us. (Perhaps I'll tell that story later.)
When I don't sleep, I feel wide awake, no hint of drowsiness or sleepiness in any way, and I can tackle ANYTHING. A mania does not always come with insomnia, often they are separate. But last night, it was coupled. Around 5 AM I did start getting sleepy, but I had to be awake at 6 AM to get Thing 2 off to school, so I just stayed up. After she went to school, I made eggs & sausage for everyone's breakfast, and puttered around the house a bit before settling in to blog.
When the sleeplessness finally starts to change, I start to feel tired physically, even though my brain is still going a mile a minute. I'm listening to whoever is talking to me, but it's not quite registering. My body starts to burn and the fibro starts to remind me that it's there (like I could forget). The burning is under my skin, in the muscles, and inside my stomach muscles. It's really weird and kind of difficult to articulate and describe.
It's currently 15 minutes until 11 AM and I feel stiffness, burning, and aching in my muscles, pain in some of my joints (I may have arthritic issues, too, due to my psoriasis, which can cause psoriatic arthritis), tiredness, but still no brain shutting down, no quieting of my thoughts. I'm still thinking. So, since I'm still thinking, I do stuff.
I'll probably go through much of the day feeling this way and I may crash in the next few hours, but I kind of hope I don't because I really need my sleep schedule to adjust. I don't know of a better way to do that other than starting with a night & day of sleep deprivation and then going to bed around 10 or 11 the following night.
Right now, another issue I have when I've had a night of mania or insomnia, is that I'm terribly on edge. Thing 3 woke up around 6:30, so he's crabby due to being overtired. Thing 1, my aspie, is home schooled (very loosely, more like unschooling, please google that if you're unfamiliar with the concept) and he likes to go around yelling and making random noise and he can also be belligerent and cranky if things don't go the way he expects them to go.
So I have a crabby, whining Thing 3 and a crabby, moody Thing 1 and I'm overstimulated and overtired. LOVELY combination!
Oh yeah: Thing 1, Thing 3, and I are NOT morning people. It takes a good hour or 2 for us to become functional people. The Roomie is the same way. We all (including Thing 3, at age 4) require coffee to function.
Thing 2 and The Husband take only a few minutes to adjust to morning. And they don't require coffee.
An additional note:
I got to thinking about how The Husband reacts to me being awake all night.
Not well.
He doesn't understand that this isn't something I can just change with the flip of a switch. He also doesn't understand my Aspieness, though he has made great strides in that regard and I'm proud of him for that.
When I'm awake at night, he can't sleep, either. He wakes up every few hours, grumbles about me not being in bed, and either sits up with me or sleeps on the couch. He just doesn't understand that it's not something I can fix. If I take OTC sleep aids, I'm completely asleep and/or a non-functional and useless zombie for a good 12-24 hours. No joke.
So I stay awake. And so does he, many nights, affecting the following day for both of us.
I have issues with insomnia as well and when i get some sleep, i still wake up constantly through out the night, and i sit there until i go back to sleep. I usually have to go wake mom up, go to the bathroom, change the channel on the tv, go get my kitty to cuddle, anything and everything to help me out. When I do get sleep, I cherish my sleep. so if anyone disturbs it, beware!! and if you come in and talk to me, i wont remember what was said, as if it was a dream. I am not a morning person either which lead to me to change my major and to schedule afternoon and evening classes only.
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