Warning:I go way off topic and talk in non-formatted blocks of text about one of my hallucinations.
So it's currently 4 in the morning and I'm on a no-med day. This calls for a blog!
*cue cheesy 80's blog intro - imagine me running alongside a dolphin as pop music plays. Ralphs are swinging on swings, The title is in some wacky font that makes typographists cry.*
I got a message from a Ralph the other night who was new to my whole situation that read "How does insomnia begin?" I could answer this with a terrible joke about how it begins with an "I" but I've already hit my quota for bad jokes today.
Instead I'll try to tell you how it started for me, and how I kept falling back into it. I may also go all self-analytical again and make baseless claims on why I have this problem because that's fun!
I use insomnia as my go-to fixerupper for whenever I'm depressed or sad or any other negative emotion. Somehow I channel all this energy into not appearing phased at all by anything but somewhere along the line it converts into hours spent staying up and thinking or reflecting on the things making me depressed.
I've been staying up for as long as I can remember, but I used to always have the ability to sleep. I had a thing when I was younger where I'd stay up in bed and count with my parents - I was a smartass kid here, I managed to con my parents into teaching me every number up to 1000. After I had figured out the pattern I dozed off satisfied that I'd kept my parents up long enough. Not being able to get back to sleep however, started one night when I was around four years old. My mum had just gotten news that my dad had been caught holding up a service station and was now sitting in a jail cell. Me being the little tike I am had woken to the noise outside my bedroom and walked out bleary eyed to her crying. She told me that something bad had happened and I immediately connected this with me not staying up with them and counting. This may not have much of an impact on me actually being an insomniac but it's the first time I can remember not wanting to go to sleep at all - I'd actually try to force myself to stay awake so nothing bad happened again.
Since then staying awake has been my go-to for any sort of dire situation. From my sister trying to kill herself to having someone die to losing someone I love. From all these I can act completely calm and emotionless in the face of others, and store the emotion into something that has the potential to at most kill me and at the very least give me more time to write up shitty blog posts.
I've narrowed this down to my fear of being unable to stop something terrible from happening. Somewhere deep in my subconcious is an urge to stay awake and alert to ensure that I'm always in complete control of the situation around me. My general mindset in this condition is that Sleep=No Control, which is kind of counterproductive since after two or three days of being in control I start to get hallucinations and then being in control gets significantly harder.
That's one thing I've been meaning to write down - might as well do it now!
Stage 1 - Light (Completely Harmless, looks cool).
This is where some of the nicer hallucinations I frequently get reside. It normally manifests itself as the lights at night jumping from one source to another and taking on a vaguely sprite-like movement pattern. I get these in the early stages of sleeplessness and they're normally when I'm feeling happy or calm. Sometimes it happens during the middle of the day and sometimes they're small animals that I feel comfortable with.
Stage 2 - Dark (Mostly Harmless. terrifying).
This is pretty much like the stage above, except it occurs when I'm not feeling too good. Normally it's brought on after a few days of not sleeping and feeling paranoid. It often manifests as a shadow slinking along the ground or a shadow that hides in other shadows. On certain occassions it has manifested as an overall encompassing darkness that seems to jump out at me. This is the reason it's only Mostly Harmless instead of Completely Harmless. I've been driving along and this shadow has jumped out at me, causing me to swerve. If it was any other time that wasn't 3 in the morning I might have crashed into something.
Stage 3 - Apparitions (Harmless so far, creepy).
These are the weirdest ones I get, but they're just weird. Two notable incidents of this stage are:
One time on a train I hallucinated that an old lady came to sit down next to me, I looked at her and she smiled at me. I looked out the window as we came into the next stop and there was the old lady sitting down on the metal seats. I looked back next to me and the old lady was gone. The old lady then walked into the train and sat down next to me. At the next station someone sat down right where the old lady was sitting and the old lady was suddenly sitting in another seat. Another, more recent encounter was a couple of weeks ago. I was sitting down on my couch and next to me was me. I had a long conversation with myself but I can't remember any of it. All I remember was that one of me had a phone in his hand and was typing on it. I looked at it later and noticed that I'd had a conversation with a few friends, some of which didn't make any coherent sense.
Stage 4 - Sleepwalking. (Dangerous, looks creepy to outsiders)
At one time this was a very bad problem for me. So bad in fact that I needed to bind my legs and tie them to my bedpost so I didn't get up and walk away. To an outside observer this looks terrifying. My eyes are wide open and I'm normally muttering something incoherent. This can anything from "I have to go" to "It's going to be over soon" to anything else that would make someone worry. Sometimes if I get stopped I'll go back to bed, sometimes I'll collapse where I'm standing, sometimes I'll start screaming.
If I'm not stopped, I would manage to make it to the alleyway near my old house (At least, that's where I ended up). More recently (In the past couple of months) I've managed to get further than ever before, I woke up one morning in the middle of a park about half an hours walk away from my house with my car keys in hand. I immediately panicked and searched for my car nearby but eventually I went home and saw the car right where I left it.
Stage 5 - Paralysis (Causes harm, Terrifying)
This is the one I hate getting. It fucks with the one reason I stay awake, and takes away my control. Think of the worst nightmares you've ever had, the ones where you're being eaten alive or ripped apart or you're falling onto spikes. Now take that and intensify the pain. Now take that and take away your ability to do a single fucking thing about it, you're bound so tight you can't even scream for help so you just lay there, taking the pain and sobbing. You're confused, you don't know where you are - even though you know you went to bed last night you're sure this place isn't it. Your brain is trying to rationalise you not being able to move by creating all of these ridiculous situations. You're panicking, you're still technically asleep but you're awake at the same time. All of your nightmares are real.
When I was younger, the one stage 5 hallucination that kept coming back to me was this. A group of black metallic spiders would force their way out of my skin, literally tearing it open, making me bleed profusely from the open wounds all over my body. They would then walk all over my body, digging their razor sharp legs into my skin. They'd crawl all over my face and cut me up with their legs and there'd be way too many of them. So many of them that I'm literally held down by the sheer weight of the robotic bugs on me. I'd try to open my mouth to scream but every time I did one would try to go in and force it's way down my throat. I laid there tears filling my eyes while I could see my roommate sleeping peacefully, even with the thousands of spiders crawling on him. In my view was also an alarm clock, seemingly stuck on 5:38. After what seemed like hours of agonising torture the clock finally hit 5:39. The pain kept going and it was so intense I wasn't even able to pass out.
When it finally hit 6:00 on the alarm clock it started to ring, and all of the spiders started to crawl back into me. Not through the wounds they had created, but through my mouth and my eyes. I tried to scream as hard as I could while they forced their way in but no sound came out, The pain was unbearable by now and I was covered in sweat. After what felt like an eternity the spiders had disappeared and the alarm clock had hit 6:01. I started to move and every part of me was burning. The cuts and wounds were gone but it still felt like they were there. My bed was soaked in the sweat that wasn't on me and I could smell and taste my own blood and the metal of the spiders.
This had come back recently, about midway through last year, but it hasn't happened again.
I rambled, I'll get back to the insomnia story another time.
Adios,
Jamie.
So it's currently 4 in the morning and I'm on a no-med day. This calls for a blog!
*cue cheesy 80's blog intro - imagine me running alongside a dolphin as pop music plays. Ralphs are swinging on swings, The title is in some wacky font that makes typographists cry.*
I got a message from a Ralph the other night who was new to my whole situation that read "How does insomnia begin?" I could answer this with a terrible joke about how it begins with an "I" but I've already hit my quota for bad jokes today.
Instead I'll try to tell you how it started for me, and how I kept falling back into it. I may also go all self-analytical again and make baseless claims on why I have this problem because that's fun!
I use insomnia as my go-to fixerupper for whenever I'm depressed or sad or any other negative emotion. Somehow I channel all this energy into not appearing phased at all by anything but somewhere along the line it converts into hours spent staying up and thinking or reflecting on the things making me depressed.
I've been staying up for as long as I can remember, but I used to always have the ability to sleep. I had a thing when I was younger where I'd stay up in bed and count with my parents - I was a smartass kid here, I managed to con my parents into teaching me every number up to 1000. After I had figured out the pattern I dozed off satisfied that I'd kept my parents up long enough. Not being able to get back to sleep however, started one night when I was around four years old. My mum had just gotten news that my dad had been caught holding up a service station and was now sitting in a jail cell. Me being the little tike I am had woken to the noise outside my bedroom and walked out bleary eyed to her crying. She told me that something bad had happened and I immediately connected this with me not staying up with them and counting. This may not have much of an impact on me actually being an insomniac but it's the first time I can remember not wanting to go to sleep at all - I'd actually try to force myself to stay awake so nothing bad happened again.
Since then staying awake has been my go-to for any sort of dire situation. From my sister trying to kill herself to having someone die to losing someone I love. From all these I can act completely calm and emotionless in the face of others, and store the emotion into something that has the potential to at most kill me and at the very least give me more time to write up shitty blog posts.
I've narrowed this down to my fear of being unable to stop something terrible from happening. Somewhere deep in my subconcious is an urge to stay awake and alert to ensure that I'm always in complete control of the situation around me. My general mindset in this condition is that Sleep=No Control, which is kind of counterproductive since after two or three days of being in control I start to get hallucinations and then being in control gets significantly harder.
That's one thing I've been meaning to write down - might as well do it now!
JAMIE'S FUN GUIDE TO HALLUCINATIONS AND SLEEPWALKING!
Stage 1 - Light (Completely Harmless, looks cool).
This is where some of the nicer hallucinations I frequently get reside. It normally manifests itself as the lights at night jumping from one source to another and taking on a vaguely sprite-like movement pattern. I get these in the early stages of sleeplessness and they're normally when I'm feeling happy or calm. Sometimes it happens during the middle of the day and sometimes they're small animals that I feel comfortable with.
Stage 2 - Dark (Mostly Harmless. terrifying).
This is pretty much like the stage above, except it occurs when I'm not feeling too good. Normally it's brought on after a few days of not sleeping and feeling paranoid. It often manifests as a shadow slinking along the ground or a shadow that hides in other shadows. On certain occassions it has manifested as an overall encompassing darkness that seems to jump out at me. This is the reason it's only Mostly Harmless instead of Completely Harmless. I've been driving along and this shadow has jumped out at me, causing me to swerve. If it was any other time that wasn't 3 in the morning I might have crashed into something.
Stage 3 - Apparitions (Harmless so far, creepy).
These are the weirdest ones I get, but they're just weird. Two notable incidents of this stage are:
One time on a train I hallucinated that an old lady came to sit down next to me, I looked at her and she smiled at me. I looked out the window as we came into the next stop and there was the old lady sitting down on the metal seats. I looked back next to me and the old lady was gone. The old lady then walked into the train and sat down next to me. At the next station someone sat down right where the old lady was sitting and the old lady was suddenly sitting in another seat. Another, more recent encounter was a couple of weeks ago. I was sitting down on my couch and next to me was me. I had a long conversation with myself but I can't remember any of it. All I remember was that one of me had a phone in his hand and was typing on it. I looked at it later and noticed that I'd had a conversation with a few friends, some of which didn't make any coherent sense.
Stage 4 - Sleepwalking. (Dangerous, looks creepy to outsiders)
At one time this was a very bad problem for me. So bad in fact that I needed to bind my legs and tie them to my bedpost so I didn't get up and walk away. To an outside observer this looks terrifying. My eyes are wide open and I'm normally muttering something incoherent. This can anything from "I have to go" to "It's going to be over soon" to anything else that would make someone worry. Sometimes if I get stopped I'll go back to bed, sometimes I'll collapse where I'm standing, sometimes I'll start screaming.
If I'm not stopped, I would manage to make it to the alleyway near my old house (At least, that's where I ended up). More recently (In the past couple of months) I've managed to get further than ever before, I woke up one morning in the middle of a park about half an hours walk away from my house with my car keys in hand. I immediately panicked and searched for my car nearby but eventually I went home and saw the car right where I left it.
Stage 5 - Paralysis (Causes harm, Terrifying)
This is the one I hate getting. It fucks with the one reason I stay awake, and takes away my control. Think of the worst nightmares you've ever had, the ones where you're being eaten alive or ripped apart or you're falling onto spikes. Now take that and intensify the pain. Now take that and take away your ability to do a single fucking thing about it, you're bound so tight you can't even scream for help so you just lay there, taking the pain and sobbing. You're confused, you don't know where you are - even though you know you went to bed last night you're sure this place isn't it. Your brain is trying to rationalise you not being able to move by creating all of these ridiculous situations. You're panicking, you're still technically asleep but you're awake at the same time. All of your nightmares are real.
When I was younger, the one stage 5 hallucination that kept coming back to me was this. A group of black metallic spiders would force their way out of my skin, literally tearing it open, making me bleed profusely from the open wounds all over my body. They would then walk all over my body, digging their razor sharp legs into my skin. They'd crawl all over my face and cut me up with their legs and there'd be way too many of them. So many of them that I'm literally held down by the sheer weight of the robotic bugs on me. I'd try to open my mouth to scream but every time I did one would try to go in and force it's way down my throat. I laid there tears filling my eyes while I could see my roommate sleeping peacefully, even with the thousands of spiders crawling on him. In my view was also an alarm clock, seemingly stuck on 5:38. After what seemed like hours of agonising torture the clock finally hit 5:39. The pain kept going and it was so intense I wasn't even able to pass out.
When it finally hit 6:00 on the alarm clock it started to ring, and all of the spiders started to crawl back into me. Not through the wounds they had created, but through my mouth and my eyes. I tried to scream as hard as I could while they forced their way in but no sound came out, The pain was unbearable by now and I was covered in sweat. After what felt like an eternity the spiders had disappeared and the alarm clock had hit 6:01. I started to move and every part of me was burning. The cuts and wounds were gone but it still felt like they were there. My bed was soaked in the sweat that wasn't on me and I could smell and taste my own blood and the metal of the spiders.
This had come back recently, about midway through last year, but it hasn't happened again.
I rambled, I'll get back to the insomnia story another time.
Adios,
Jamie.
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