My sleep schedule.

[gottawonder]

The way my body works, is that I am often up most of the night, and sleep for almost a perfect 8 hours from whenever I go to bed. Often after noon.

This does not make me lazy, or horrible, but I can never wake up without feeling like I am already behind. I have to feel rushed to get chores done and shower and change if I want to go get groceries. I have to schedule just about everything in life for afternoon or evening.

On days where I must get up early, then I often just can't sleep at all, and I have an awful day.

It would be nice to think that this is just something I've slipped into as a result of not having to work. After all, I used to get up early for university. I suffered. I got up, felt like a zombie all day, slept for three hours when I got home, and then still stayed up until 2 am or more.

This has been true any time I am not forced by circumstance to alter my sleep pattern. Other people who aren't forced to get up still usually get up before noon, and go to bed earlier, just because that's what their bodies want. Not me.

I end up just feeling like a failure most days, because I already start by the failure of getting up late enough that I feel bad about how that limits me. Every day starts with the same internal dialogue. "Oh, 1 pm. That's...okay. I can still maybe get something done before it's dark. Maybe I can get groceries since the store stays open till 8. I'll have to rush if I want to get to that other store that closes at 5, though." Then I go through the same script quietly throughout the day; "if I had gotten up earlier I could have got this and this done, but that won't work today. Not tomorrow either, because I ride at 4, and won't be done till 5:30 ish."

All day long there are little reminders of my failure to be normal. The sun is gone only a few hours after I get up. I can really only do one or two things a day before "normal time for business" is done. I miss out on things if they start in the morning, unless they mean so much that they outweigh the misery of getting up for them.

When I go home to visit family, it would make sense to get up early and drive all day so that I make the most of the sun. Nope. I leave when I leave, and drive all night, and end up at my Mom's at 5 or 6 am, then struggle to sleep in her house while she decides today is a good day to slam pots and pans together (literally, it seems like she does this every day as a way to wake me up because she thinks it's time I get up. She slams all her pots around and curses like she can't find something. Every day.). Then she exclaims loudly outside my door to every person who comes to visit "She's still in bed, she sleeps till NOON, you know!" Like I'm a leper of some kind. Or just the laziest person she's ever met.

To say the least, it has become a real chip on my shoulder, to quote my sister. That means I am sensitive to anything that might be someone judging me, or I perceive innocent situations and comments as if they were slights because I am expecting them.

Today, my husband and some friends (who have worked more on our house now than I have) were working together again in the basement. I felt worthless, because they showed up at 9 am, and worked until noon. So, not only did they all talk and make a ton of noise ensuring that I got no actual sleep, but I was acutely aware of them working on our house. Something I have done very little of. Then, by the time I COULD have helped, everyone was done for the day.

So, today I got to wake up exhausted, after having been in a state of near hallucination from what it does to me to hear voices and tools while I am in a limbo state, and to know that once again, our dear friends put in some solid work on our house, while I laid in bed.

I know that there is no way around it. I come across as a fucking useless piece of shit to our friends. They have likely been here 20 times helping on the house while I was still in bed. They are likely extremely curious about how I could possibly be like this. How my husband can stand me. How I can be so entitled as to lay in bed all day and let people do my work for me.

What's even worse, is that I do have obligations when I get up. I have to do chores, I have to ride River (If we're paying for lessons and board, I have to ride at least three times a week or I might as well not bother), I have things to do in town. That means a lot of days I have to leave the house and try to get something done in town before everything closes, and by the time I get back, you got it. Everything is done for the day. I might be up for ten more hours, but my sweetie is done, and he's going to bed in three hours, so now I have to be quiet for him. I can't even do dishes or housework, I have to let him sleep.

So day after day, he works on the house when he's home (he's working again, so on his days off), he's meeting with contractors and inspectors without me, and he's getting our friends over to work. I am in bed.

Every day I wake up already hating myself. Every night I go to bed knowing that I'm setting myself up for another day of self-loathing.

I constantly have to explain to people that I am a night owl, and I know what goes through their mind.