My body is betraying me. It’s breaking down. When I learned how short life spans were a few hundred years ago, my child self thought it must be so terrible to die in your 30s. Now, living in this 32 year old body, I kind of get it. At this point, I’m just a set of past-their-prime parts, Scotch-taped together with meds and coffee.
The issues started in my teens, maybe even childhood, I’m not sure.
I don’t sleep. I know, I know, everyone has trouble sleeping.
But seriously. I. Don’t. Sleep.
I’ve written about it before so I won’t bog you down with too many details but just suffice it to say I haven’t found a doctor yet who can fix it. It’s pretty serious, and it’s genetic; all my siblings struggle with it, as well as my dad and probably half the extended family on that side. I’ve wondered if someone had put a curse on our family at some point maybe. My current sleep meds include: four times the larger commonly recommended dose of melatonin, fifty milligrams of trazadone, fifteen of buspirone and ten of ambien. All at the same time. Google that shit, it’s a lot.
I used to push through it all the time in my twenties. I’d drive to work on four hours’ sleep in 48 hours and miraculously not kill anyone. Just a few months ago I tried to make it on no sleep at work and ended up falling asleep on the toilet. Awful experience, great office anecdote.
So I’ve become smarter and call out when I’m incredibly deprived. I’ve called out twice in the last two weeks because I still didn’t sleep more than an hour with that entire pharmacy in my liver.
The panic attacks started in my teens.
My aunt says I’d always been an anxious child, but in high school, I started to get these periods of acute stress. I couldn’t breathe, I felt like I was going to pee my pants, you all know the drill. They’d come at night most often, as I was trying to fall asleep. Between that and the insomnia, I ended up just staying up all night reading. The monsters in my books were comforting compared to the attacks.
My partner at the time convinced me to seek treatment for both of these conditions in college, around 20 years old. My doctors told me both of the conditions, in my body, were particularly severe, well past the average for either. So that was a fun doctors’ visit.
I dealt with the sleep problems and panic with meds and running. I ran far too often. I was so sure if I stopped running I would collapse into a useless bag of diseased dust. I was like an addict. I would feel enormous amounts of stress if I skipped a run, telling myself I was worthless and lazy. I would obsess over making time to run, having space to run all the while also fixating on what I ate and drank. I refused to drink alcohol, terrified of losing control. I never touched weed. I just ran and ran and ran. Like a sick greyhound.
Any mental health professionals reading today can tell you that those are the markers for an eating disorder (ED). Interestingly that’s currently not even on my list of official diagnoses. I had so many other things I was treating, I kind of just recognized it and treated it on my own with google searches. 2 out of 10, I do not recommend.
I cut my running down to once a week. I started enjoying booze. I still worried more than I should about exercise and nutrition, but it was managed. My knee became injured at some point in my early twenties, but I was good and took a year long break from running for it to heal.
At one point during the medication trials, I suddenly gained fifty pounds in two months. Today, I suspect undiagnosed PCOS as the cause; it runs in my family and I have other symptoms as well. But all I got from the doctor was that I clearly wasn’t eating well enough. That felt awesome and validating and was great for my already intense food issues. So the causes for weight gain went untreated and I got fatter. Today, I’m over 300 pounds.
My late twenties were largely event-free, bodywise. I got a divorce and leaned on booze a little too much for the pain. But I checked myself and reigned that in to what I think is now drinking more than one should, but not addictively. Which is good enough for me. I am Irish, after all. I started a career as a psychologist, and helped people who also had mental health issues like mine. It felt good to do good.
One day, at work, when I was 28, my back got a little sore while I was walking across campus. It was a long walk and I had a big belly, so I just figured it was a sore muscle and would go away. I was still running regularly and it could just as well have been from that.
The back pain got worse every few weeks. It got to where I would make sure to group any errands I had on another part of the campus together. I’d put off filing something on another program area until I had a meeting on that side of campus. I figured it would go away.
Around the time the pandemic started, the pain worsened and instead of going to the doctor, my type-A bitch of a personality, helped along by a formerly dormant eating disorder, decided increased exercise was the answer. I looked up “exercises to help a sore back,” and built up my abdomen and upper back muscles, per the articles. I actually developed great abs, under a thick layer of stubborn fat, of course. Then the nausea hit.
I stopped running around the time I was diagnosed with Type Two Diabetes. The back pain was too much and the nausea from the diabetes and the meds was debilitating.
I treated the diabetes and started working after the pandemic. That’s when my body decided to actually show me what insomnia could truly achieve. I stopped sleeping almost entirely; for two months I couldn’t get more than one or two hours. My blood sugar was off the charts.
I couldn’t run anymore to tire myself out. So I’d go to bed and cry. Do you know how awkward it is to cry yourself not to sleep? It’s just like crying yourself to sleep except instead of sleeping, your body gets so tired of crying it just stops, and then you sit yourself up and doom scroll instagram with Gilmore Girls on in the background until morning. My cat actually really loved this stretch of insomnia.
It’s all being treated. None of these are immediately life-threatening conditions. My boss was very kind when the insomnia kept me out of work for the better part of two months. I manage the nausea. I’ve actually developed a nice weed habit that helps with both of those and the back pain too. But it’s hard.
Today I got home and the house was a mess. Normally this would bug me. But today I couldn’t even look at it. I hadn’t slept well for a few days so I was pretty fatigued. I had been cranky with my partner because of that and honestly being that much of a bitch is also a lot of work so I was very tired. But when I saw the mess, all I could think of was how badly it would hurt my back to clean it all up. So I went to bed and tried to sleep. Surprise: I couldn’t sleep.
I got out of bed to pee and ended up crying on the toilet. I felt so bad for myself, so bad for my body. I took my arms and hugged my massive chest and rocked and cried. I took my hands from my shoulders down to my quads. I mourned the muscles that used to grow there, so strong and powerful from my three mile runs. I cried at their absence.
I thought about how often I’ve skipped work or a social function because of my conditions. I cried as I remembered skipping a dear friend’s wedding because I hadn’t slept in days. I cried as I thought of my patient boss who hasn’t fired me.
I thought about my dog who passed away, who ran two miles of my three with me the week she died even though she was riddled with cancer at the time. I cried as I mourned her.
I let my hands follow the skin damp with sweat from the work of sobbing down to my knees. I held my knees in my hands and cried to them. I said I was sorry for how mean I was to them when I’d make them run every day even when they were hurting. I cried as I told them I was sorry for hurting them and I knew why they rebelled.
I rested my hands on my calves, no longer hard with runner’s strength, but flacid and fat. I held my belly. My big fat belly that I finally got used to feeding until the diabetes caused an ED flare up. I apologized for being mean to her as well. I cried and told her I loved her and she was good even though she was big.
I wrapped my body in my sweaty arms, I cried, and I mourned who she used to be.
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