GAH. Mind is all over the place tonight. My Saoirse side and Janet side are in conflict – we’re probably as separate from each other as we’ve been in quite a while. The key disagreement is about work, and taking an unpaid leave of absence of 5 days. Saoirse, of course, is against it.
Why did I feel it necessary? Because for the past two weeks, nights have SUCKED. They are full of nightmares/flashbacks and anxiety. Thursday and Friday of last week we got less than 2 hours of sleep a night according to my Apple Watch’s sleep tracker. That’s when I pulled the leave trigger.
Nights are always hard. Even in the best of times, we often don’t get more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. We make up for it with naps and by crashing on the weekend. I’ve always been a night owl, so part of that is just natural circadian rhythm stuff, but man, it seems like 80% or more of flashbacks happen at night. I have no idea why. I usually don’t know, or don’t remember, the content of the flashbacks. I just know they happen, and deal with the after effects. They take a very real physical toll. I wear a recording pulse/oxygen meter at night because of sleep apnea. When a nightmare hits, my pulse can jump into the 150s in my sleep. I’ll wake up, wet with sweat, heart pounding, in fight/flight/freeze/dissociate mode… basically all jacked up. And that’s been happening more since the whole Dad dying thing.
It’s gotten to the point I’m afraid of sleeping at night.
So, yeah, not conducive to working a full-time highly technical job. But Saoirse thinks we take too much time off, which we do, honestly. We make up for it at night and on weekends. Saoirse wants to soldier through as best we can. I think we need the time off. I’m concerned that 5 days won’t be enough. But, I have no idea what to expect. I just know we need to get enough sleep to function during the day.