Skip to main content

Tired in Toronto

It's not falling asleep that's the problem; it's staying asleep. It has now been officially a month since I slept soundly through the night. Possibly longer. The last time I remember sleeping through the night was the first week of January, for one night. Before that...well, I started paying attention at the end of December, after my fourth experience of sleep paralysis, this time accompanied by the shadowy figure of a man in my bedroom doorway.

I'd guess I'm still getting 6 hours of sleep a night, so I'm not dying from sleep deprivation. I have not gone to the doctor (I don't even have a doctor!). And I don't like to over-spiritualize this sort of thing... So I'm left waiting it out.

Other suggestions I've received include a glass of wine before bed, melatonin, some type of nasty-tasting tea.

That is all. Just telling the world. A shared sorrow is a half sorrow, right?
Labels:

Comments

  1. Silas5:44 PM

    has anyone suggested acupuncture?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Katie V.7:56 PM

    Sorry to hear this is still causing you probs. I've had some old hags myself (apparently the folkloric name for this phenomenon). Freaky. Ideas.....acupuncture sounds like a great suggestion. Maybe massage? That is just good anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ry9:40 PM

    May I seriously suggest prayer? Its not over-spiritualizing it, but rather how we communicate with him who gives all things good. I will even pray for you if you don't want to, haha.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Beth11:35 PM

    silas - you are the first to suggest acupuncture!

    ry - prayer is ongoing, but i'll take yours too :)

    katie - massage happens every few weeks... and i am curious about the folklore!

    ReplyDelete
  5. becca11:35 PM

    hey beth, i think it's brave of you to share about this sort of thing. i've experienced it before, and i would lean towards a spiritual explanation. now, i grew up southern baptist, so all things "spiritual battle" were foreign and scary to me until about a year or so ago. i've just finished reading neil t. anderson's "the bondage breaker" and he has some good insights. mainly, we can't say that something someone is experiencing is only spiritual or only physiological, because neither of those elements cease to exist at any point in time. i.e. there is never a time when you exist outside of a spiritual realm or a physical realm.

    while that might feel scary, don't be scared! you are a child of God and the evil one canNOT touch you! :) i learned from this book that when i'm scared of the devil or his minions, i'm believing a lie that he has more power than he does. he's so tricky! he uses scare tactics (and they often work) but they're just smoke screens! you are safe!

    anyway, i could go on about this, but you should read the book. i really appreciated that the focus of the book is on Christ's words (which are so true, especially in this sort of situation), if you know the truth, the truth will set you free! you are a child of God, you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the devil cannot touch you. resist the devil and he will flee from you. if it happens again, just start with those thoughts.

    man, if i heard someone say all this stuff to me not too long ago, i would've been freaked out and thought they were loopy. hopefully you and your readers don't think that about me. ;) but it's so simple, the truth sets you free.

    praying for you. for real.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Beth7:40 PM

    becca - thanks! i read that book in high school, and it changed my perspective on spiritual warfare as well. i definitely think the whole sleep paralysis has a spiritual connection. what i'm unsure of is whether or not this restless sleep is "random" or not...

    thanks for the prayers :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Silas8:16 PM

    i only suggest acupuncture because i tried it last year and it helped significantly. oftentimes i would fall asleep during acupuncture (that is common) which was a relief. i can suggest someone in toronto if you wish! i know it sounds pretty intimidating at first

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Simone Weil: On "Forms of the Implicit Love of God"

Simone Weil time again! One of the essays in Waiting for God  is entitled "Forms of the Implicit Love of God." Her main argument is that before a soul has "direct contact" with God, there are three types of love that are implicitly  the love of God, though they seem to have a different explicit  object. That is, in loving X, you are really loving Y. (in this case, Y = God). As for the X of the equation, she lists: Love of neighbor  Love of the beauty of the world  Love of religious practices  and a special sidebar to Friendship “Each has the virtue of a sacrament,” she writes. Each of these loves is something to be respected, honoured, and understood both symbolically and concretely. On each page of this essay, I found myself underlining profound, challenging, and thought-provoking words. There's so much to consider that I've gone back several times, mulling it over and wondering how my life would look if I truly believed even half of these thin
1 comment
Read more

I Like to Keep My Issues Drawn

It's Sunday night and I am multi-tasking. Paid some bills, catching up on free musical downloads from the past month, thinking about the mix-tape I need to make and planning my last assignment for writing class. Shortly, I will abandon the laptop to write my first draft by hand. But until then, I am thinking about music. This song played for me earlier this afternoon, as I attempted to nap. I woke up somewhere between 5 and 5:30 this morning, then lay in bed until 8 o'clock flipping sides and thinking about every part of my life that exists. It wasn't stressful, but it wasn't quite restful either...This past month, I have spent a lot of time rebuffing lies and refusing to believe that the inside of my heart and mind can never change. I feel like Florence + The Machine 's song "Shake it Out" captures many of these feelings & thoughts. (addendum: is the line "I like to keep my issues strong or drawn ?" Lyrics sites have it as "stro
2 comments
Read more

Esse - Czeslaw Milosz

I'm on a bit of a poetry binge this week, and Monday afternoon found me lying on the luxurious shag rug of a friend's tiny apartment, re-reading some of my favourite poets (ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Czeslaw Milosz). It is an adventure to re-open a collection and wonder what will pop out, knowing something you've read before will strike you afresh, or you will be reminded of a particularly moving line that you had somehow forgotten. Like this piece from Milosz, which floors me. Every. damn.* time. The first time I read it, I lay in a park with a friend (this same friend who offered me her rug as my reading burrow) and demanded that I share it with her. I spoke it carefully, and then, into the post-reading silence, I slammed the book shut, and dropped it as loudly as I could onto the grass. "I'm never reading anything again," I declared, "What else is there to say?" Esse I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro st
Post a Comment
Read more