Sleepytime

For a while now, instead of coffee I’ve been drinking a mix of store brand black tea and “Sleepytime Tea” (by Celestial Seasonings).

I used to drink “Tension Tamer”. I really liked the flavor, but I can’t find that at my grocery store anymore.

Recently, I saw “Sleepytime Extra” at the grocery. It was in a noticeably bigger box, slightly different design, and twice as many tea bags at a slightly lower price per tea bag. So, I bought it. I didn’t think much about it and just assumed the “extra” referred to the bigger box it was in.

Also recently, I’ve been feeling really sleepy at various times during the day, like when I go to the theatre to do my job playing in the pit for a show. At first I thought I’m just tired lately. But the past day or two I’ve been wondering if there’s something wrong with me. (Maybe I should say, something ELSE wrong with me, along with the other stuff that I already know about.)

This morning, maybe half an hour ago, as I was making tea, it struck me that I’m drinking “Sleepytime Tea” several times during the day, and I’m feeling sleepy when I’m sitting in a room with dimmed lights (i.e., the theatre). I started wondering if the tea had something to do with it. Is there something in it that actually makes people sleepy, instead of it just being a cute name? So, for the first time, I actually read what was on the box. Well, it turns out that the “extra” in “Sleepytime Extra” is valerian root, which is a traditional sleep aid.

Perhaps I need to look more diligently for “Tension Tamer” as my normal daily tea (to mix with the cheap black tea) and save the “Sleepytime” for actual sleepy time.

not getting up

I'm still in bed. I'm considering not getting up.

I was just thinking how often, on days like this, I don't want to get up. At first I thought it was something to do with the weather, but then I realized it's just me. I feel tired and very blah, sort of emotionally empty, and my body doesn't feel so good. I just want to stay in bed. Actually, that's every day, I think. Yeah, I feel like that every day. I never want to get up. Maybe I should just never get up. 

Of course, that sounds like death. Death is not getting up. Ever. Some people find you there, not getting up, and they move you around to a couple of places - maybe a hospital, a morgue, a funeral home. They poke and prod you a bit, to be sure that you're not going to get up. Finally, they put you into this weird, expensive, stylized bed, which is probably very uncomfortable. But you don't really care, cause you're just not getting up. 

Your friends and family all show up for a really bad party. Then they either move you (and that weird little bed) to someplace else, someplace very out of the way, or they just let your soul continue sleeping while they get rid of your body, or at least minimize it. So long as you take up as little space as possible. 

Yep, that's it, that's what happens when you die. There's a bad party, then people get you out of the way because they need the space. Various people get your stuff, and eventually somebody else moves into your place - literally and figuratively. And meanwhile, you're just off out of the way, not getting up.

. . .

. . .

Well. . . I guess I should get up now. 

I don't heart New York

I’m still not sleeping well. Haven’t all week here in NYC. The past two nights I took a sleep aid that I got at Duane Reade. That’s basically Walgreens in New York City.

Someone had recommend ZzzQuil, but I ended up getting a generic pill: diphenhydramine. (Same active ingredient. Last night it didn’t seem to help much at all. I think the night before it may’ve helped get me to sleep, but I didn’t stay asleep. I was awake off and on all night. Every night’s been the same. Yesterday I stayed in and tried to nap during the morning and afternoon. But it wasn’t very satisfying sleep—just the same as nights here, awake off and on, both my body and my mind were tossing and turning and not being able to settle down.

I’m ready to be back in my apartment in North Carolina. I'd forgotten about 5-floor walk-ups and subway staircases and inclines and hills. New York City is rough on my feet and shins. But it’s also rough on my…brain? soul? self? Whatever. I’d also forgotten that I just do not much like it here. 

Much like anywhere else, it’s okay when I’m actually in rehearsal, but the rest of the time it’s pretty miserable. I think the general problem I have of feeling desperately alone is compounded here by being surrounded by so very many people—people I don’t know, people I’ll never really connect to.

There are people here that I do know, but I’m not very close to any of them. It’s just the same story I’ve been telling for years now. This is my life now, and I don’t want it. But it’s been this way for so long, I’ve gone down a path that’s lead me here. (And, to extend this path metaphor) I feel like it’s sort of a one-way dead end combined with a cul-de-sac, with no side roads leading out. 

This is not good. 

O Sleep...

I woke up this morning around 8am. A bit earlier, actually, and I sort of half-slept a little longer. But then I was fully awake and wanting to go back to sleep. No luck.

Occasionally, I’ll sleep ‘til around 9am or later, but mostly I wake up around 8 or earlier. And when I’m awake, I’m pretty-much awake. I may feel groggy once I’m up and about, but going back to sleep doesn’t seem to be a viable option.

I used to be able to sleep in. I miss that. A roommate of mine from college once said I slept all the time. That was an exaggeration. He meant I slept a lot. I don’t think that’s true, but if it was, perhaps I’m making up for it now by not sleeping as much as I’d like.

Sometimes I’ll go through days or weeks at a time of bad sleep. It’s not generally that I can’t fall asleep. It’s that I wake up sometime in the early morning hours and turn and turn, feeling like I’m totally awake. Or I feel half asleep and thinking, not dreaming, of how I can’t seem to get comfortable. I’m not plagued by thoughts of stressful life events or situations. Just a sort of discomfort, physically and mentally. It sucks, and when that happens, I tend to feel tired during much of the day. 

Honestly, this just feels like part of the general suckiness of my life.