sleep

i usually find sleep relatively hard to come by i am much more awake than most normal people and with the addition of pharmaceuticals i often find that sleep evades me altogether. it is so nice then to wile away my evening sleeping. a natural sleep and for once to wake up at a normal hour (although for some seven am on a sunday still shrieks abnormally early) and not feel like i've run a marathon rather than nap.

the black rings are still there, they are semi-permanent at this stage and only layer upon layer of carefully applied under-eye concealer hides them completely. but they are not too visible with my glasses on they are mostly disguised. its hard to be bothered to put makeup on, its generally not really my kind of thing so people have grown accustomed to the purple look. when someone i'm close to says, 'you look tired,' i know that what they're really saying is you look like death.

recently i've looked like death. with all the goings on of late i decided to once more try the pharmaceutical approach and my doctor prescribed me citalopram...all i can say is what an epic adventure. and also maybe no thanks.

after the fainting i should've wised up but i didn't and it wasn't until i collapsed and subsequently lost all my memories of the evening and started hallucinating that i realised this drug was not for me. so back to prozac. good old prozac for me the drug kills my already teeny tiny appetite and i find it harder than ever to sleep. sleep almost entirely evades me. last time i tried this out i was awake for six days straight before taking many sleeping pills just to get any sleep. this time around it seems to be better. less of the sleeplessness. i'm just lacking in quality sleep. everyday i wake more tired than i was the day before.

i've always had nutcase-style dreams but i find that prozac heightens this and so i tend to get the more extreme version of my dreams. instead of dreams of everyday activities they become distorted and bizarre. and being a true dreamer they are in colour. vivid as hell and i invariably confuse them with reality. i am truly like the character in Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep."  my reality is distorted, ever changing and forever becoming less and less. i often used to feel that when on prozac the only part of me that truly lived was my dreams. i hope that does not become the case this time.

it is amazing though the rapid transformation that one can have from feeling far too much to almost nothing at all. for me some drugs seem to work too well. not so sleep medication. people with anxiety often have trouble sleeping. when i look back over the years and see all the sleepless nights i realise just how highly-strung i am. night after night of lying in bed staring at the ceiling. and i could never sleep during the day, the light seems to suggest some excitement that i will be missing if i stare at the ceiling for another second. its like a show and no matter how dull or dreary the show is i can't close my eyes to it and escape into dreams. this is where i am different from stephane. my dreams stay my dreams, no matter how much i sometimes wish for them to be my realities. my dreams are only dreams. they are in colour and sometimes i get them confused with my reality but they are still only my dreams. i am lucky i guess to dream in such detail such rich colour. i miss my dreams when i do not sleep.


i am a little damned if i do and damned if i don't really. for me sleeping pills mean the end of dreams. so does insomnia. nights like last night are precious.