Working on detachment, my anxiety, and the joys of limbo

[Phoebe]

Painter, I'm a night owl, too, but I have been fighting it tooth and nail for the last few months, and for the same reason you mentioned - I can't sleep in these days. Once I wake up, I'm done.

For my whole life, I would go to sleep and wake up 8 hours later. Like clockwork. Lately, though, I've been waking at first light, and been unable to get back to sleep. The only thing that has helped is to try to get to bed earlier. I've got the dark curtain thing going now, and it buys me more sleep in the morning, but I'm more in the 6 hour a night camp now, and if I can't get to sleep in the first place, then it's going to be a lot less. Last night I lay there until at least 3:30 am. I tried reading before bed, as that's kind of my bedtime ritual. I'm avoiding caffeine, taking benadryl.

I do have melatonin, so I'll try adding that tonight. Thank you for that reminder, Grl.

Thanks for the kind words about my losses, Painter. I had this baseline grief from those deaths, and the loss of those two friends left me even more invested in H, so that when he took off I was just bereft.

My H has always wondered if he has ADD/ADHD. His father certainly exhibited plenty of symptoms that would fit that diagnosis. H took a trial prescription of Ritalin once, but he didn't think it helped him. He also tried SSRIs another time, and didn't think they helped, either. Of course, now I know that he didn't take them long enough to even make that kind of decision, and the dose may not have been appropriate. I wish he'd found something that had helped him, but he just sort of gave up on that line of thinking at that point.

I'm looking forward to the Audubon meeting. Maybe I can get into some birding stuff in a more serious way. I'm just a novice, but a very interested one. I actually considered taking a 6 weeks birding class in March, but it was kind of expensive, and at that time I wanted to stay available to potentially travel to the other state at any time to work on my M. That was back when I thought we were piecing. So much for that, huh?

Today I'm heading out to a local greenhouse (an amazing place, by the way) to buy my Mom some hanging baskets for Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you beautiful mothers here! You are incredible, and I admire you all so much.