Winter Is Coming

I think I could handle everything - depression, anxiety, the fact that the world is burning down around me, if I could just sleep. I've had problems with insomnia on and off, and I realize now that I keep saying I've had problems "on and off". Has my life been a series of problems waiting in line patiently for their turn to mess with me and now they're re-enacting the big fight at the end of Avengers: Endgame? Who's going to come through the next portal? Terrible self-esteem? Thanks for joining the party! Stress-induced stomach problems? Welcome! The one thing I haven't done is just emotionally collapse because I see something on TV where a dad is nice, but you know that's just waiting for Doctor Strange to wave him in.

I don't know why I'm blaming Doctor Strange for this.

But as it is, I'm lucky to grab two hours of sleep a night. Usually it's somewhere between zero and one. And I'm super busy at work right now, so I'm really feeling it. And that means I get worried when I'm not sleeping because I think about what the next day holds for me and how hard it is to get through the day when I'm exhausted and once I'm in that spiral, I might as well grab the Switch and play some Zelda because I will not sleep even a moment that night. I feel bad all the time and over the last couple of nights I've been looking into whether people can die from not sleeping or if it would actually work to choloroform myself. Answers: (1) Not really but kind of and (2) definitely not.

This is probably going to be an ongoing theme because it's kind of taking precedence. Depression, sure, I'll figure it out. Nobody's going to get hurt. But if I don't sleep for three nights, is it even OK for me to drive? This is an actual mechanical problem with real world implications.

Putting that aside, lately I've been seeing friends occasionally. Still safe, just a socially distant porch sit. It's nice. I like my friends, even if I don't want them to know that I have a blog about being sad. But it's a fun thing that gives me a little lift. And then on Sunday my friend Becky invoked Game of Thrones by reminding us that winter is coming. I'm in Michigan, where it is cold as balls from November through March on a good year and we're covered in snow for at least three months straight. Outside meetings are going to go away. Sure, it's not quite August yet but by mid-September it will be intermittently uncomfortable. Start up the fire pit and you can get a couple good hours but it's not like we can all gather around. This isn't going to be done by then and the one social thing I still have in my life is going to be gone.

I haven't touched a person since March. I had some good solid hugs before the lockdown started, but that was the end of it. Once it gets too cold out, I could easily go four months without being in the presence of people I care about. Once the snow falls, that's it for me making eye contact with loved ones. And I'm kind of bad at interacting with people to begin with - I'm going to be an actual hermit by the time winter ends. I'll be speaking to myself in a language that I made up and recoiling from human voice. I wish I had an insight to close on but I'm kind of occupied with this 'not sleeping' and 'probably going crazy'. Which is only going to make it harder to sleep and I'm going to go into this fugue state where everything starts to look like a pillow. 

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