While You Weren't Sleeping

These past couple weeks, I haven't been sleeping properly. I've been suffering from anxiety attacks that keep me up at night, and nightmares what wake me up once I'm finally down. I got no sleep for so many days in a row that I couldn't remember my last good night's sleep. It was so brutal that one night, I had to get out of bed, and turn on the lights to fight off the anxiety, and then I was so frustrated and tired that I lay on my living room floor, sobbing.

When I first started not-sleeping I wished for a fast-foreward button. I just wanted to be a few years ahead of where I am now. I'm making progress towards what I want, but it's slow-going. I was miserable with everything. I started to write a blog post about it. About how I felt miserable even though my life is great, even though everything is going in my favor, about how confused I was about feeling so awful. Things for me a great, so why did I feel so down?

By the end of last week, I was so tried, and so miserable that I wanted to kill myself. It's been a while since I felt like that, and admitting it right now makes me really uncomfortable. I think it was just the lack-of-sleep. Right now, I don't want to die. Not at all. At the time, I just wanted the pain to stop, and sometimes I get caught thinking that's the only way to make it. Not usually, not often, but sometimes. Sometimes, when I'm emotionally drained and phsyically unwell, when the anxiety is too much, and the exhaustion is overwhelming, I think like that. I think it would be easier to just roll over and die. Just to make it stop.

And I think that's why I stopped blogging last year. And I think that's why I don't talk to my best friend anymore. Because when I feel like that, I know better than to share. If they believe me, they will be worried, scared. No matter how desperate I get, I wouldn't do it, because I couldn't do that to the people I love. Jeffrey, Amanda, Lauren, all of my friends, would be hurt. I couldn't hurt them like that, no matter how desperate I was. One person's pain is nothing compared to the pain of three, four, five or ten people.

So if my friends realized how serious I was, they would be concerned. And more likely, they would think I was just attention-whoring, and that would be even worse, I think.

I don't think like this very often. I need anyone who reads this to understand that. The big, the bad, the bold "I want to kill myself" is not an everyday occurrence, or even an every month, or every year thing. It just happens once in a while.What I'm really talking about is that miserable feelign that proceeds it. That "fast-foreward button" thinking that I do. That's why I stopped talking. That's why I shut down. That's why.

Sometimes I fall apart. And I'm okay. I will eventually be okay. I'm blogging right now, because holding myself accountable is something that will, I hope, help me be okay, and stay okay.

Even when I fall apart, it's not that bad. While I was drowning in exhaustion, I made a friend. I'm not good at making friends. I have friends in Massachusetts, and I have friendly acquaintances everywhere I look, but I don't really have any local friends, besides Jeffrey and his family. I am friends with my manager at work, but if she gets caught hanging out with me outside work, she'll be fired, so we don't very often. I don't want to. I don't want her to get in trouble, and I get nervous. I worry. I care. But now I finally have a friend who I wouldn't be afraid to call up and say "Let's go on an adventure, today." Of course, he's moving at the end of this month, so that sucks. I already have plenty of friends who I talk to online only. I want an adventure buddy while Jeffrey is at work! I want someone who I can invite to have dinner with Jeffrey and I!

And now I've totally changed topics, but I'm going to leave it, because I think it's also good to remind myself that there is hope. There are good things.