Yeah, we already wrote tonight. So this is the "Late Night" edition.
We haven't slept well since Friday night; which is the last time, before tonight, that we imbibed (in alcohol).
For months now we have ceased drinking on the weekend, at James' request - he doesn't like when we drink, which usually coincides with us watching the news channels, and playing around on Twitter (he hates American news, and he hates Twitter) - and so other than the 6-7 hours we spend during the day with him during the week (from waking until 5pm), on weekends, we spend all of our extra time with him.
We can't sleep on the weekends.
We want to, but we toss and turn all night, waking at least every hour with nightmares, anxiety, sweats, worries. Some of it might have to do with the time we spend sitting in bed on the weekend, because The Mother and Stepdad are home, and so we relinquish the main floor to them when we can. We should relinquish it more, but sitting in bed just makes our back hurt; which is probably one of the reasons we toss and turn. It just makes our back hurt.
So, we don't sleep on weekends very much. It's a long time in bed, tossing and turning. Sure, we could turn to Twitter with our insomnia - but that's what we did in the "old days"...and this is the "new days"...
Tonight, we've been drinking. And we'll sleep. And I'm crying, because...we might have a problem.
Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts
Monday, January 7, 2013
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Lullaby
We struggled to sleep last night, tossing and turning, kicking the sheet away. One of us has a high sensitivity to light when trying to sleep, and the printer from the area outside of our bedroom was casting a light, keeping her (and us) awake. It took awhile to figure it out. Awhile, too long.
Finally we stumbled out of bed and covered it with a towel. James thinks it's funny how sometimes (it's not every night, obviously) we have to cover all the lights emitting from electronic devices in order to get to sleep. Even the little light on the television we currently have in our bedroom can keep us up for several extra hours, until we throw dirty laundry in front of it. TVs in bedroom are bad on so many levels anyway, I can't wait until there is another room to put it in.
Despite the fact we could sleep as late as we want, we try to maintain a steady time of waking up (by 9am, at the latest, is ideal) and we don't nap unless we are ill because it's hard enough to shut down all the circuits to get to sleep at night, let alone doing it in the middle of the day with many various things going on up there. Focus, sometimes, is barely attainable.
In attempt to provide some lulling, before shutting down the electronics...
Here's to another day under out belt, and hopefully a restful night of sleep.
Finally we stumbled out of bed and covered it with a towel. James thinks it's funny how sometimes (it's not every night, obviously) we have to cover all the lights emitting from electronic devices in order to get to sleep. Even the little light on the television we currently have in our bedroom can keep us up for several extra hours, until we throw dirty laundry in front of it. TVs in bedroom are bad on so many levels anyway, I can't wait until there is another room to put it in.
Despite the fact we could sleep as late as we want, we try to maintain a steady time of waking up (by 9am, at the latest, is ideal) and we don't nap unless we are ill because it's hard enough to shut down all the circuits to get to sleep at night, let alone doing it in the middle of the day with many various things going on up there. Focus, sometimes, is barely attainable.
In attempt to provide some lulling, before shutting down the electronics...
Here's to another day under out belt, and hopefully a restful night of sleep.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Sleepless Nights And A Hateful Personality
We know it's getting close to the time where we have to record here, or anywhere at least, some of the events from last year...things about our network of "real life" friends, things that went on behind the closed doors of our apartment, our mind; and more things related to Fuck Face and the hand he had in our systems mutiny of The Other Girl, the personality we all recognized as our core - even though now some of us are having doubts about her being our core. Some of us are feeling, rather some of us feel, she somehow my have been the stronger personality. She was very controlling of her life, while letting people walk all over her. But that leaves us without a core...and we don't know if that's possible.
How do we know this? That we're getting close to another "purge"?
Lately, late at night, while we toss and turn trying to sleep we keep getting repeated flashbacks of certain events that took place last year about this time...it's making it hard to sleep. It's almost like each personality involved is trying to "copy" the memory for each other...pass it on, like a a computer, in the darkness of night, on a repeat cycle.
It's making it hard to sleep.
During the day time it's not much better, some days. We are getting what we will refer to as "imagery", because it's not a hallucination, necessarily. Brooke (one of the personalities in our system) is playing tricks with us. Like we've written before she used to do things last year like try to get us to throw our cellphone over the bridge we walked over everyday, knowing it would hurt us...she used to try to get us to imagine, trying to get us to do it, stepping in front of city buses on the way home from work on very bad days she was around. When we got our last job, before we were forced to leave the country in which we were living, she would tell us how funny it would be if we would stick our hand in the deep fryers at work. We have no doubt that she was the one that convinced us to swallow a load of pills with vodka, our suicide attempt around the time of our 21st birthday.
Her new thing is guns. She got sparked by something, probably we read on Twitter, gun related. So during the day, while we sit on the mattress in the bedroom where we sleep and spend most of our day working on the computer she likes to get us to imagine guns, putting the cold barrel of a handgun to our temple...and then she says wouldn't it be funny to do that...but then goes farther and she gets us to pull the trigger.
None of the imagery involves blood, it just sets on repeat. Putting the gun to our temple, fingering the trigger...oops. Oops our ass.
We have no idea where this is coming from, where any of her hate is ever coming from. She only hates us, and likes to alight herself with people she knows are capable of hurting us. She was a big fan of Fuck Face, even though many of the things he did we're because we allowed him to do it, at least at some points.
Some therapists might consider this, Brooke and her imagery, borderline schizophrenic in symptoms, we're sure; but the fact that we consider her to be part of our system, one of us...makes it not so. Despite the fact that she hates us, we love her...there is just something..."wrong"...with her. One day we may find out, when we're in a safer place to finish our mapping and find out where she fits in.
We told James about it this weekend, walking home after dinner. We try to tell him as much as we can with what goes on in our head, even if it's a couple of weeks after symptoms have started. Sometimes it's very hard to talk about...to write about...to admit. A certain amount of shame is felt by some of us, in allowing her to play with us in such away, about not being able to block her out. We also wanted to tell him, at the moment, Friday night, because we managed to articulate it, and it's his right to know, as our partner, our lover, our boyfriend, our friend.
We also told James for safety reasons. We know that target shooting is something he'd like to do when we get back to the states, and so would we. We've held handguns, shot pistols, rifles...we've made shotgun shells and had a gun training when we were younger (about the age of 12), we like guns as far as a recreational activity. We come from a family of hunters. We have a respect for firearms. Though we're not even sure we could get a temp license to shoot in a range. They don't let people with our kind of mental health background handle hand guns...(or have life insurance, or donate blood...)
This entry is not meant to scare anyone, or concern anyone (dad, mom, other family & friends) - it is meant to share with people the battles that are fought with mental health issues, and also to get it out of our mind, so that perhaps we can get some decent sleep.
A quick note on sharing.
Mental Health Month is coming up soon (in May) and we have launched a website dedicated to helping others share their stories of life with the public, a year round venture, because with understanding comes acceptance, and working towards demystifying "mental illness". Ivy wrote about it a few days ago, and we're trying to be all on board with it (not completely successful so far), so we may be mentioning it often in the next month - for more info check out what she wrote a couple of days ago: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/frank-mental-health.html or just go to the website for more information: www.frankmentalhealth.org
~ Frank et al
(sorry for spelling & grammar mistakes, if there are any today)
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Projects: A Journal Entry
We have a culinary degree, well some of us. Never is there more indication of our varied abilities and education variances than when we can't remember the proper way to boil pasta. Do we put it in cold water and bring it to a boil, or boil the water and then add the pasta?! That's culinary school 101 for fuck sake.
That was yesterday. Maybe she (Ivy) can't cook, but she's an artist, and definitely can inspire some of us in our cooking. She started working on some cool new projects, which we're mostly keeping under wraps for the time being, sharing it with key people we trust, before we unveil it here. What we can say is if you are a person who uses creative therapy (writing, poetry, art, music, dance, etc.) to manage and express your struggles, or experiences, with mental health issues, then we're going to want to hear from you, whether it's a blog, or you want it to have a presence on the web. That's all we're saying about that, for now.
We only fear for anything we start because what appears to be procrastination to others is more of a struggle between us, some of us don't want to have any part of certain projects we undertake, particularly this one, which some of us wanted to start almost a year ago, in a slightly different form, meaning it's hard to get some of us to work on the things we need to work on. This blog is really the only exception, and some days it's a struggle.
We're hopeful though, that we can find a partner outside of ourselves, down the road, to help work on the project.
We have too many projects.
Yesterday Ivy bought some India ink, and the appropriate nibs and handle for doing some artwork. We've only done a couple India, our best being Untitled. It's been almost years since she picked up the ink.
Meanwhile, our sleeping schedule is off the charts again. Thankfully we're getting 6-8 hours, which is awesome...but it's turning into a 4am bedtime...we'd like to blame Twitter, but we really can't. Our mind reels with communication, the good kind lately, for the most part, but also massive headaches.
Thankfully writing helps, and we can go back and see what we've written to each other and try to find some understanding.
Tonight after James gets done with work we'll be off to get the car he purchased Monday night on Ebay. We have to take a train to a nearby village where the man we bought it from will pick us up at the station. We're pretty excited for wheels.
That was yesterday. Maybe she (Ivy) can't cook, but she's an artist, and definitely can inspire some of us in our cooking. She started working on some cool new projects, which we're mostly keeping under wraps for the time being, sharing it with key people we trust, before we unveil it here. What we can say is if you are a person who uses creative therapy (writing, poetry, art, music, dance, etc.) to manage and express your struggles, or experiences, with mental health issues, then we're going to want to hear from you, whether it's a blog, or you want it to have a presence on the web. That's all we're saying about that, for now.
We only fear for anything we start because what appears to be procrastination to others is more of a struggle between us, some of us don't want to have any part of certain projects we undertake, particularly this one, which some of us wanted to start almost a year ago, in a slightly different form, meaning it's hard to get some of us to work on the things we need to work on. This blog is really the only exception, and some days it's a struggle.
 |
| Untitled India Ink on paper by Frank et al, 2003 |
We have too many projects.
Yesterday Ivy bought some India ink, and the appropriate nibs and handle for doing some artwork. We've only done a couple India, our best being Untitled. It's been almost years since she picked up the ink.
Meanwhile, our sleeping schedule is off the charts again. Thankfully we're getting 6-8 hours, which is awesome...but it's turning into a 4am bedtime...we'd like to blame Twitter, but we really can't. Our mind reels with communication, the good kind lately, for the most part, but also massive headaches.
Thankfully writing helps, and we can go back and see what we've written to each other and try to find some understanding.
Tonight after James gets done with work we'll be off to get the car he purchased Monday night on Ebay. We have to take a train to a nearby village where the man we bought it from will pick us up at the station. We're pretty excited for wheels.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Jet Lagged
A "re-print" from today's blog post on Our Frank Adventures.
Now we find ourselves alternating between not being able to sleep at all (like the night before), and not falling asleep until after 1am - not unusual when we were back in America, but that was 1am American/home time, which is roughly 7pm - and sleeping about 14-16 hours a day. Meaning we're getting up at 2:30pm local (8:30am American/home). It's like we're sleeping in a swing-shift pattern. Not convenient if you want to get things done, or feel particularly healthy, and much of the area closes around 5 or 6 pm.
Granted it's damn cold, we can still see our breath as we travel through the living room to the kitchen, and that drives us to want to remain beneath the pile of warm blankets, but come on.
Other signs of jet lag, besides sleep disruption all relate to digestion (we will spare you details), hunger, and other body functions. It's hard to tell if always being cold is because we are a woman, or if it's because it's so chilly in the flat. James seems to be fairly comfortable most of the time. Jumping when we touch him with our icicle-like hands.
We've been making sure to get exercise when we are awake though, it's about a 3 mile trip, round trip, into the city center where we have been going each day (yesterday we did it twice), and when we don't do that it's another 3+ mile round trip to most other places. That should be helping us, but it's hard to kick that excessive sleeping.
We've only been here 5 or 6 days though, so maybe that will change? We really didn't think jet lang lasted this long.
James got work today, it may be only one day of it, but he might be offered a month, and it's pretty great pay, so that means we'll get a little more than two hours of heat a day! We're really excited he got a job, for so many reasons, because it'll be good for him to be away from us a few hours a day (and we him) but also we can now take some trips into London, and further North into England (and Scotland), to see the sights, learn some more history (by the way, who needs a travel guide when you have a mobile phone with wireless!) take photos to share will you, our readers, try local foods and restaurants and visit some friends in England!
~Catherine
More on jet lag: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Jet-lag/Pages/Introduction.aspx
Monday, January 23, 2012
An Angry Angry Rant
*Please note, a separate entry was made on our travelogue today: Worth The Weight In Pounds?
An unexamined life is not worth living for a human being. ~ Socrates.
Right off. I cussed a lot in this entry. I, me, Cassandra usually don't like to cuss much. But..well...this is just a filthy angry entry.
I had a great post about anger running through my head this morning, mostly because the pain in my neck, back and hips was making me see red and I could not sleep after a few hours of laying in bed, so all I had was time to lay and think, words running through my head, rolling and repeating in waves, trying to stick so that later, when I could get to a laptop and type without freezing my fingers, they could travel onto the page smoothly. Didn't happen. We wandered around the city this morning with James, our third day here, before heading to the library to write, and I just ended up getting pissed off at the lack of spatial awareness people have, and lost most of our entry into the cloudy English sky. And the rest dissipated with increasing anger trying to suppress our rage at loud and rude people in the library.
I'm feeling quite angry today. It shows on our face, according to James. We hope he realizes it doesn't have much to do with him. I adore him a lot, and don't like when he thinks I am upset at him when I am not.
Anger is viewed as a negative, generally...especially when people don't really understand it. (American Psychological Association: Anger http://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control.aspx) The Other Girl spent almost her entire life trying to control as much of our anger as possible, keeping it in, absorbing it...not surprisingly, since she is now gone, it's managed to seep out, the damn broke a little over a year ago, and now it's ours...to roll in and learn about. We are not thrilled, as a whole. It's spreading across our personalities, for some of us it is an uncomfortable feeling, a foreign emotion, and it makes us uneasy.
Anger. It can bubble up to the surface, it can come from physical and mental ailments, from displeasure with ones situation in life, from atrocities done to, and by others, whether they be in close relationships, in ones own country, or the world in general...or it can come from dealing with just plain ignorant fucking people.
It's not uncommon for people to cause anger in others just by being themselves (you only need to read Twitter to get a glimpse of that reality). In our opinion, the people who get angered by others view the public, those people they are angry at, at best, as sheep...and the very best...lemmings. Why lemmings at the very best? Mostly because lemmings will follow all the rest over a cliff, and sheep, well, sheep will stand there and let you herd them, no questions asked. And who wouldn't love to watch a cascade of lemmings over the edge of a cliff.
In both of these examples, sheep, lemmings, are living beings, lets call them humans, who walk around in a state of bliss, not paying attention to anything, doing as they are told, or whatever the status quo of normal is, believing everything they are told; and while they may be self absorbed, they do not have any inquiry into life, or themselves....they are only concerned with their superficial well being as it pertains to a very immediate surface, they do not try to search for reason. For example, they do not encounter an angry person and think "Gee, they must have something bad going on in their life to be so angry. I wonder if they are okay."...rather they think "Why is he angry at me?!" Like it's all about them. People usually don't give a fuck unless they think it has something to do with them, or will affect them negatively, and why should they? Really. But they shouldn't be surprised about the anger of people who do give a fuck about a lot of things, or have a lot of personal reasons to feel anger. It's a natural emotion of a healthy human being.
Some people, of course, go about life being angry for no reason. They are not in pain, physically or mentally (other than the anger itself), they have had a relatively normal, easy life, are not angered about the happenings of the world (because they don't even know what is going on) are economically comfortable as far as most people in the world would conclude and are probably just a self-entitled brat.
Sorry.
I are not here to rage on the spoiled. Some would definitely consider us spoiled, and we would be a boob to disagree 100%, we can afford travel...mostly because we try not to spend money on things we do not need (excess clothing, drugs, alcohol, restaurants, entertainment) - it doesn't always work, this time it did, but the mere fact that we had a choice on what to spend our money on, that makes us a bit spoiled.
Anyway, people who are angry for absolutely no reason are generally assholes (and yes, sometimes we are an asshole) and should probably do some work on trying to figure out why they are a miserable sod. That was the eventual point to all of what was rolling around in the hurricane of a brain system this morning. Every day can't be coherent.
Yeah. This entry did not go exactly where I wanted it to. Fuck. Perhaps I am just agitated because it feels like someone had a punching war with our back, the pain radiating into our knees, up into our neck. I don't deal well with pain, and it's always worse in the cold. Perhaps I am just ranting spoiled angry girl rants - I am not usually the angry one, I don't like being angry - because I miss our bed, our beautiful pillow top king sized bed we were luckily enough to purchase a few years ago, a splurge by The Other Girl, because people spend a third of their life in bed (some more than others, of course), and a good bed is paramount to good health, and because our chronic pain already sucks the life out of us some days, a good bed does wonders for our mental health. I'm not meaning to sound ungrateful for the bed James has provided us at his flat (a ten year old queen sized, no box spring...I swear at least one spring is broken on my side), we are grateful we are with him here in the UK in the first place. These are just matters of fact.
I'm whiny. I'm more whiny than the rest of us. There's another fact. Sorry. Probably. For being me.
My head feels all fucked up.
We'll have internet soon at the flat...a great rate too. That's what we wrote about in the entry we mentioned at the top of this one... Worth The Weight In Pounds?
~A very disgruntled Cassandra (& et al)
An unexamined life is not worth living for a human being. ~ Socrates.
I had a great post about anger running through my head this morning, mostly because the pain in my neck, back and hips was making me see red and I could not sleep after a few hours of laying in bed, so all I had was time to lay and think, words running through my head, rolling and repeating in waves, trying to stick so that later, when I could get to a laptop and type without freezing my fingers, they could travel onto the page smoothly. Didn't happen. We wandered around the city this morning with James, our third day here, before heading to the library to write, and I just ended up getting pissed off at the lack of spatial awareness people have, and lost most of our entry into the cloudy English sky. And the rest dissipated with increasing anger trying to suppress our rage at loud and rude people in the library.
I'm feeling quite angry today. It shows on our face, according to James. We hope he realizes it doesn't have much to do with him. I adore him a lot, and don't like when he thinks I am upset at him when I am not.
Anger is viewed as a negative, generally...especially when people don't really understand it. (American Psychological Association: Anger http://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control.aspx) The Other Girl spent almost her entire life trying to control as much of our anger as possible, keeping it in, absorbing it...not surprisingly, since she is now gone, it's managed to seep out, the damn broke a little over a year ago, and now it's ours...to roll in and learn about. We are not thrilled, as a whole. It's spreading across our personalities, for some of us it is an uncomfortable feeling, a foreign emotion, and it makes us uneasy.
Anger. It can bubble up to the surface, it can come from physical and mental ailments, from displeasure with ones situation in life, from atrocities done to, and by others, whether they be in close relationships, in ones own country, or the world in general...or it can come from dealing with just plain ignorant fucking people.
It's not uncommon for people to cause anger in others just by being themselves (you only need to read Twitter to get a glimpse of that reality). In our opinion, the people who get angered by others view the public, those people they are angry at, at best, as sheep...and the very best...lemmings. Why lemmings at the very best? Mostly because lemmings will follow all the rest over a cliff, and sheep, well, sheep will stand there and let you herd them, no questions asked. And who wouldn't love to watch a cascade of lemmings over the edge of a cliff.
 |
| The irony, of course... |
Some people, of course, go about life being angry for no reason. They are not in pain, physically or mentally (other than the anger itself), they have had a relatively normal, easy life, are not angered about the happenings of the world (because they don't even know what is going on) are economically comfortable as far as most people in the world would conclude and are probably just a self-entitled brat.
Sorry.
I are not here to rage on the spoiled. Some would definitely consider us spoiled, and we would be a boob to disagree 100%, we can afford travel...mostly because we try not to spend money on things we do not need (excess clothing, drugs, alcohol, restaurants, entertainment) - it doesn't always work, this time it did, but the mere fact that we had a choice on what to spend our money on, that makes us a bit spoiled.
Anyway, people who are angry for absolutely no reason are generally assholes (and yes, sometimes we are an asshole) and should probably do some work on trying to figure out why they are a miserable sod. That was the eventual point to all of what was rolling around in the hurricane of a brain system this morning. Every day can't be coherent.
Yeah. This entry did not go exactly where I wanted it to. Fuck. Perhaps I am just agitated because it feels like someone had a punching war with our back, the pain radiating into our knees, up into our neck. I don't deal well with pain, and it's always worse in the cold. Perhaps I am just ranting spoiled angry girl rants - I am not usually the angry one, I don't like being angry - because I miss our bed, our beautiful pillow top king sized bed we were luckily enough to purchase a few years ago, a splurge by The Other Girl, because people spend a third of their life in bed (some more than others, of course), and a good bed is paramount to good health, and because our chronic pain already sucks the life out of us some days, a good bed does wonders for our mental health. I'm not meaning to sound ungrateful for the bed James has provided us at his flat (a ten year old queen sized, no box spring...I swear at least one spring is broken on my side), we are grateful we are with him here in the UK in the first place. These are just matters of fact.
My head feels all fucked up.
We'll have internet soon at the flat...a great rate too. That's what we wrote about in the entry we mentioned at the top of this one... Worth The Weight In Pounds?
~A very disgruntled Cassandra (& et al)
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