I have been having a terrible time with sleep since stopping the Xanax. I cannot fall asleep. I try. I try to talk to myself and prepare myself with the self talk in hopes of falling asleep when I hit the pillow. It seems to be getting worse as the nights go on. Last night I laid there until two am and decided it was time to get up so I went downstairs and watched a little television. Oh ya, that will help anyone relax, over 200 hundred channels of crap to get your juices flowing even more. I can go to bed and feel tired but as soon as I lay down my brain likes to jab me and start messing with me. It likes to go over all the crap that it should have put to rest from going over it and over it all day long. If that makes any sense as I am person who has to make sense of everything. Truthfully, I miss the Xanax so much. I almost caved last night and took some but I self talked myself into not going down that road again. I went to the doctor the other day and now I am going to try Ambien for sleep. I am not sure I am happy about this treatment either as this can also be habit forming and you are not suppose to take it for more than five weeks at a time. So after five weeks I stop and I am worse because I now have become somewhat addicted to Ambien? It is a no win situation, at least for me. My doctor also told me there are now insomnia clinics. You dedicate so much time to taking the classes and it involves a lot of homework on training your brain to sleep. I can hardly even think of adding more to my plate as I am going to start PT for my cervical spine and my foot. One step at a time is all I can handle. It is all so very exhausting to say the least, which you think would help me sleep. Hummmm, no such luck. I am anxious about starting therapy. Using the energy it will take to do therapy will completely wear me down which I am sure makes no sense to most of the world but if you are chronically ill you understand.
I laid there with all of the above running through my head at three am when I finally climbed back in bed and I thought to myself: THIS IS ALL A PROCESS. I also thought to myself: I AM SICK OF THE PROCESS. I wish it were like a merry go round where you could just stop the insanity and jump off and it is all erased, but then what would I/we learn from our process? I finally feel asleep thinking about the process and wanting to run to my blog at three am to write. I resisted. My blog has become my one true friend that really gets me. The friend I can pour it all out to and not have someone tell me things like you are fine, my blog just listens and I am in control and if you know me I love that! I woke up at nine am because I couldn't sleep anymore and my brain began to work all over again. If only we have a little switch on the side of our head to flip it off. No such luck.
The more I thought about the process and before my strange slumber I thought about the process and how all of life is really just that, a process. The process of growing up in, at times, a hateful world. Mean children while you make your way through elementary school. The process of being a part of a family and fitting in there. The process of Jr and Sr high school and fitting in there all the while wondering what the heck is going on. The process of college and all dealing with life on a whole different level. The process of having all the right cloths or being cool and fitting in somewhere. The process of finding a mate and getting married, having children, raising children, working, making friendships, getting hurt, having health issues, and the list could go on and on. I am sure you can add many of your own processes. You survive all the processes, somehow, we all do. All of life is a process and when I think of it I made it through all the hard parts so I am sure I can make it through the process of finding a way to sleep. It will all work out, it always does.
In the end, and only this morning did it hit me, I figured out what the process was. Do you know? Think about it for a second or two.............The process is called life. It can throw some hard knocks your way. It may even eat you alive at times but you have to try to focus on the good things through your process. Does that mean we forget all the hard parts of the process? No! Those are the parts that make us who we are and mold us either in a good way or a bad way. It is up to you to decide what you will let the process do to you. I believe the process never ends until the day we die. We must live each day to its fullest and take the bad when it comes, learn, and move on. We must also savor the good as well. In the end it is all our own make up, our own lessons, and our own life. Here's to hoping for a good nights sleep tonight or maybe a little nappypoo to catch up on the six hours I lost last night in the process.
God Bless!
Dianne
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