User credit: inked.bunnyx on insta

[PT: not enough people talk about how debilitating circadian rhythm sleep disorders can be. /End PT]

It is genuinely so fucking exhausting living in a world built for people with a 9am-5pm (or at latest 11am) expectation of wakeness.

I have a circadian rhythm sleep disorder. Sleep disorders already aren't spoken about enough, but almost nobody talks about CRSDs.

CRSDs mean a person wakes and sleeps at atypical times. A person with a CRSD isn't just a "night owl" or "early bird".

They are not "choosing" their body's natural sleep schedule. (PT: They are not "choosing" their body's natural sleep schedule. /End PT.)

In fact, usually, they cannot voluntarily change their schedule - their body will not readjust to a schedule change, and will continue to produce melatonin and sleepy chemicals at its predetermined time.

Specifically, I have non-24 sleep wake disorder (N24.) This means that my sleep schedule either slowly shifts an hour or two every other day, or it drastically swaps.

Example:

Sunday: I am falling asleep at 9 pm and waking up at 10 am. Monday: Same as sunday. Tuesday: I am falling asleep at 11 pm and waking up at 12 pm. Wednesday: Same as tuesday. Thursday: Same as wednesday. Friday: I am falling asleep at 2 am and waking up at 3 pm. Saturday: I am falling asleep at 4 am and waking up at 5 pm.

Etc, etc, etc. My sleep either constantly does slow rotations over the course of several weeks, or one day I wake up and don't produce melatonin at all for like 20 hours, and suddenly my sleep schedule is turned all around.

I cannot take melatonin or sleep medications. [PT: I cannot take melatonin or sleep medications. /End PT]

It does not help. It just leaves me incredibly groggy and disoriented for literal weeks afterwards.

I cannot force it to change through all-nighters. Not really. Sure, after an all-nighter, I *physically* sleep at the "correct" time, but my body still produces melatonin at the time it wants to sleep, too.

So I may be physically awake at the "correct" time, but I'm *mentally* groggy and barely conscious.

N24 is debilitating. It makes you incapable of having 99% of jobs. It leaves you unable to spend time with friends like 70% of the time, unless you're willing to be groggy doing so, or they happen to be free to hang out during the times you're awake.

You can't schedule a lot of things in advance. You have to sacrifice sleep to do so, so you have to be selective about which things you schedule. I schedule two markets a month, maybe 1 other (non-work) event, and I pray my sleep schedule aligns. Most of the time, it doesn't align, and so I have to sacrifice my sleep.

I'm currently working my 2nd ever job, the 1st of which I've ever asked for reasonable adjustments. So excuse me if I'm not right all the time about what is sustainable for me and my body. And god forbid I have a dynamic disability, because when I need less accommodations, it's proof that I'm overexaggerating my disabilities, and when I need more of them, it's proof that I've been irresponsible and knowingly overdoing it.

My bosses have managed to strong arm me into a contract change cutting my hours because of one bad flare up that they attribute to me working overtime a couple weeks before. Overtime that, by the way, *they ASKED me to take* because they didn't want to use agency staff. They literally said that "if you want to work here, you need to give us requests for accommodations that actually work".

I've worked out that in their heads, accommodations are things that make a disability disappear in a work setting, which is far from the truth. And as soon as a disabled person's issues become a "nuisance" to the way they do things, it's their fault for not asking for suitable accommodations, or for taking on a job where their colleagues can't just pretend their disabilities don't exist.