Here it’s 3 am and I’m sitting in my office unable to sleep. Last night I woke up at 3 am and couldn’t get back to sleep until 6 am. Took my medications and still wide-eyed. It could be many things: hypomania, insomnia, the sleep medication being ineffective, my biorhythms being messed up, sleeping late today. Any way you look at it, I want to be asleep since I have a long day “tomorrow.”
As I have continued my battle with insomnia, my concepts of “tomorrow,” “yesterday,” and “today” are sadly confused. Yesterday started about 12 am with going to sleep for 3 hours, being up another 3, then sleeping for 9 due to the delayed effects of the sleeping pill. I worked on stuff pretty consistently until about midnight again, hoping to go to sleep “early.” But alas, it was not to be.
So today started with insomnia and will continue so until the sleeping pill takes effect, if it takes effect, as it sometimes doesn’t. “Today” will be a long one, with writing a post for my Anxiety blog and various other things I have to do.
I avoided some things yesterday that I could have done, mainly answering emails and messages from various people looking for help. I didn’t feel very wise, together or able to communicate, so I deferred them until today. But they have to be answered then to help these people out and to retain their trust as somebody that will be there for them.
How did I get in such a place? I’m not wise. I’m not that very experienced with mental illness — at least not as much as many people. All I can do is to relate my experience and give whatever hope I can.
But I feel so inadequate. Here are people with broken homes, multiple mood disorders, financial and relationship problems, the gamut. And here am I, with a wonderful wife who has stuck with me through thick and thin, a relatively comfortable living, and experiencing a very enjoyable “normal” period, though it’s the first I’ve had in years.
Yet they look to me. And I will do what I can for them, however little that may be. Maybe they just need somebody to listen to them, and I can certainly do that. But their stories are so painful that I start feeling the symptoms of a panic attack and have to stop reading and come back to them later.
It must be like aid workers in Africa or some other deprived land. So much pain and suffering, so many people, so little actual experience of what these people are going through. All you can do is offer sympathy — not empathy. To help as many as you can the best way you know how and with the supplies you have, and hope that somehow you are making their lives easier.
These images are seared in the brain forever, I am told. I feel the same way. It is very, very distressing for me. I often close threads on the Patients Like Me forum because I cannot bear the pain the people are suffering, I am just not in a condition that I might offer them something to help them out. I feel guilty about it, but I can bear only so much.
I may be coming across as feeling all-powerful, the guru that can solve the problems of the world. You should know that I don’t feel that way at all; far from it. I hardly know what to think when confronted with these people and their problems. I have such limited experience and insight that I’m starting to repeat the same things over and over. These are desperate people who need help desperately, and I hardly feel in any way up to the task. Yet they come to me.
If you are the praying sort, then pray for me. If you are not, just think of me from time to time and maybe some thought rays will zoom across the ether to help me out.
Written 2008/09/02
