Insomnia And Self-Absorption Revisited

In honor of my one-year blogiversary coming up next month, I thought it might be interesting (to me) to revisit some of my earlier posts. If it’s not so interesting to you, then I apologize in advance.

I’m happy to see how far I’ve come (and how far my marriage has come) in the past year but I can’t believe I was so self-involved that in the wee hours of the morning after the election of President Obama, this is what I chose to write about!

November 5, 2008:

“Who said nights were for sleep?” Marilyn Monroe

Yes, I know Obama won. I will probably post about that tomorrow but right now what is most important to me is the fact that it is 1:30am and I am still awake.

Ever had insomnia? It sucks.

It started in late 2006. At first, I’d occasionally have a hard time falling asleep. Then it progressively got worse…and worse…and worse…and worse. My lowest point was somewhere around March of 2007. I would literally go days without a decent hour of sleep, let alone an entire night. I had a difficult time falling asleep and if I was lucky enough to succeed at that, I would wake up repeatedly, or wake up and be unable to fall back to sleep. It was awful.

I went to my doctor. There was no medical reason for it. After she tried several different types of medications that either didn’t work at all or resulted in horrific side-effects, I realized I had a serious problem.

I started reading anything and everything I could get my hands on the subject and everything pointed to anxiety and/or depression. Yeah, I slept MUCH better after THAT revelation.

Turns out it was BOTH. Great. I tried helping myself by reading books and on-line about causes of anxiety and depression but I finally had to admit that I couldn’t do this on my own. I entered therapy.

About a month into it, another very calming realization…I was seriously unhappy in my marriage. After much drama and even less sleep, we started marriage counseling and separated. We were separated for 5 months. We are still in marriage counseling.

I’m happy to report that we are doing MUCH better and as a matter of fact, have a COMPLETELY different relationship then we had before. It’s funny how you don’t realize how miserable or dysfunctional a relationship is until it’s better. I believe that’s called DENIAL.

I’m also happy to report that my insomnia has greatly improved, but I still have some bad nights. Tonight is one of those nights.

And no, I’m not in denial about the fact that Marilyn wasn’t talking about insomnia!

Thanks for stopping by!