#including tags

your mutual, and me (the op)

I’m writing a fic, I need to google something and yet both my browsers are occupied halfway through ranpoe fics and I really don’t want to lose my progress (long chapters that accidentally respawn- wait no that’s not the word… ah yes reload! to the top of the page make me cry) soooo

I have a really hard time going to bed. There are a lot of barriers in the way of sleep, and of course they all compound into a massive mess. I’m fairly confident in saying that my circadian rhythm operates on a non-24 hour cycle, so of course that’s a hard position to start with for this. I also suspect that adhd plays a big role. 

If I’m understimulated, then I’m probably already an arms length from painfully aimless boredom. So asking me to give up the handful of things I’m doing or videos I’m watching, and just do nothing until I hopefully fall asleep, that’s a lot.

If I’m hyperfocused on a task, then I definitely know that the focus I have for that task isn’t going to be guaranteed to come back anytime soon. Trying to stop myself then is even harder because I know I have to ride a productive task as long as I can, else deal with yet another unfinished project on the pile. 

If I’m exhausted, I often find that I’m too tired and not well enough collected mentally to formulate the semblance of executive functioning needed to initiate the task of going to bed. Not sure if anyone else’s executive dysfunction can be so bad as to make you too tired to be able to get into bed, but mine sure is. 

If I’m not tired at all, which is usually the case when I logically know i should go to bed, then good luck falling asleep even if I do get in bed. I’ll lay in bed a while without a hint of sleep, before giving up and just being awake too long instead. Much better than a couple years ago when an unfortunate association with sleep and needles made my brain make being in bed physically painful in a very specific and awful way for me and my reaction to the idea needles. At least now I’ve gotten better enough that I actually can lay in bed even if I’m not literally falling asleep within a minute or two.

If I’m in a conversation with someone, or one just ended but it’s ambiguous to me if it’s really over or not, then I can’t go to bed because I have a task uncompleted. Social interaction also is something that helps deal with the painfully bored-ness of how things are when nothing seems good to do. Talking to someone in a meaningful way is a fairly reliable way to have something to put my attention on and have it feel fulfilled. Not something conducive to sleeping, if I can’t converse and sleep at the same time. The closest I got was during a stretch of time when a friend and I would fall asleep together. The socialness of that without need for being awake for that, made it a really good way to fall asleep by something other than the whims of my brain alone. I miss being able to sleep like that for more reasons too, but I also miss being able to go to sleep more reliably. 

I also assume that I don’t “feel” tiredness as clearly or as directly as most people? I mostly only notice it indirectly, and infrequently even when clearly tired. Hyposensitive? Not sure how most people feel it.