I'm tired

Throughout the history of this blog, I've written about my inability to sleep. My insomnia comes and goes, but never really goes away. It's frustrating. It's depressing.

I can fall asleep, but I'm usually awake within four hours. After that, I never really fall back into a sleep of any meaningful quality. I've read that this is not a physical problem; it's a mental illness.

How can someone who is so tired be so unable to do anything about it?

I have a lot going on and really, this is the least of it, yet, this is what is foremost on my mind.

I'm so tired.

I'm also depressed, but that, I think, is just my lot in life and the way my brain is wired. It's unlikely this situation will change, and I can accept that.

You know what I want? I want to sleep. Once I'm rested, I want money. I don't want to work any more. I don't want to be around people any more. I really don't want to work any more. I want to stay home, sit on my patio, read, make jewelry, sew interesting bags, travel, write, tweet, read some more, and then get all the sleep I need.

Mostly, I don't want to work any more. And I really want to sleep.

Whatever

I had a birthday on Sunday and I didn't really notice. That's OK. When I started this blog, I never thought I'd still be around at this point to even note a birthday.

There was cake.

Allie nailed it

By Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half

One of the blogs I follow is Hyperbole and a Half, written by Allie Brosh. A lot of what Allie writes and draws is laugh-out-loud funny. Some is just puzzling. I always thought Allie came off as having a touch of the bipolar, but maybe she's just like me--prone to highs and lows, but not those highs and lows.

Hyperbole and a Half disappeared for a while. A long while. Before Allie disappeared, though, she created a post about the depression she was experiencing at the time. It was raw and honest, and sounded very familiar. She nailed it, really. The self-loathing, the inexplicable lack of energy and focus, the discouraging self-talk, all of it.

Last night, a tweet came across my Twitter feed indicating Ms. Brosh was ready to get her followers caught up with her latest chapter. It was worth the wait.

Allie wrote about how it feels to be depressed and frustrated about being depressed, and her take on that is painfully spot-on accurate. What really blew me away, though, was her description of how non-depressed people respond to someone who is going through that particular hell--and how they just don't get it. This, to me, was the brilliant part of her post. It was perfectly perfect.

I reread the whole thing three times. The pictures are, well, you just have to see those for yourself.  What I came away with was this: In two blog posts, Allie Brosh managed to articulate almost everything I have tried to express here over more than five years and hundreds of posts. There's no need for me to write about that aspect of myself ever again. I'll just refer people to what Allie created.

You should take a look.
Depression, Part 1 (October 2011)
Depression, Part 2 (April 2013)