M.I.A

I know I’ve been M.I.A on the blog front for most of the week and the reason for this has been Jet Lag. But I’m not talking your regular sleeping at awkward times jet lag. This jet lag was serious. This jet lag brought with it 2 days of insomnia. Basically no sleep. Zero. Zip. Nada.

It has been the worst. Just that awful feeling of complete exhaustion, that mental haze and emotional drain, yet when you put your head down to sleep, nothing. It’s ok for the first couple of hours cos your still hopeful that any minute now, you'll be off to dreamy bliss. But as the hours tick on and the whole world is sleeping but you, then starts the agitation, frustration and stress. You know your exhausted and desperate for some shuteye but the harder you try, the further away it seems to get. By day 2 it’s starting to get emotional. You burst into tears cos your laptop won’t restart. Husband hurries over, worried that you just got some bad news, but then tries not to laugh when you tell him the real reason for the tears. Seeing him fight the laughter makes you want to cry harder cos “he just doesn’t understand”. It’s a mess. You start to fear bedtime, cos you know it’s going to be a long night of torture. You stop looking at the clock after 3.22am, cos it’s just adding to the pressure. Morning is coming; you’re running out of time. Once the day breaks, you have to get up and get on with another day, so your sleeping opportunity is lost. Good luck out there in the real world looking like shit and acting like a zombie.

But there is a happy ending to my “woe is me” story. Last night, I slept. Great success. I broke the torturous cycle and I got a full nights sleep. I feel almost human today. The haze is lifting, my mind is clearing and my emotions are stabilizing. How did I do it? Well, I simply set my expectations low. I expected not to sleep. And instead of letting myself get frustrated with the whole thing, I surrendered. I figured since I was going to be awake all night, then I would use the opportunity to catch up on all the missed episodes of “Lost”. So I brought the laptop to bed, and got comfortable. Well, that and I popped a couple of Melatonin. But I really had no confidence in the Melatonin, cos Tylenol PM had failed me the previous 2 nights. But honestly I don’t really care if it was the change in mental approach or the drugs; all I care about is that I finally got some sleep and that I'm back and functioning almost like a human being.