Friendships

Friendships sailing in the night. It’s interesting how our friendships evolve. One day we’re happy go lucky sailing along with our friends whom we have fun with then someday those friends turn into family and things get serious and others just move along never to be seen again. Most of my friends have always been like family since I have a small and dysfunctional biological family. I have always put so much time, thought and effort into my friendships and want the same in return. My friendships have changed a lot over the years with some being great old friends to others being long gone and forgotten. I’ll always treat my close friends like family but it’ll be interesting starting my own little family in the next year and how that changes things. I hope to grow my community even bigger and better and have this amazingly huge extended family of friends to support each other! 

Sleep

Sleep is a magical thing when you get it. I’ve always had sleep problems since I was a little girl. I would run into my moms room any chance I could get and sleep with her even though she would yell at me and not comfort me. It still helped to be near someone. I used to wake up when I was maybe 6 years old and see shadows on my closet from the window and trees and that would terrify me. I had such a hard time sleeping throughout my childhood that I would have to watch the same movies to go to sleep each night before midnight and be able to get up and function in the morning for school. I later learned this was related to anxiety. I started taking sleep medications from my mom since she had the same issue although she never helped me with it besides giving me pills. I suppose she didn’t know how to handle it herself. I went to college and took over the counter sleep aids that it would make me all groggy and have a hard time waking up that it affected me going to class. I used marijuana to help me sleep because besides the pills which I hated taking it was the only thing that worked so i used that more and more. This continued for years and years taking prescription sleep aids and smoking and always having a hard time with sleep & getting up for work. I think what finally helped was end of 2018 after an incredibly hard year I took a new job that allowed me to work 2nd shift. I worked 11:30-8pm and it was a god send. I didn’t have to worry about getting to bed by a certain time to get up at a certain time and could just wake up naturally then go workout and get ready for work. It was a dream schedule for me. It helped me stop taking sleep medications pretty much altogether and just use melatonin which never used to work for me. Now I work a normal 8-5 job most days and get up even earlier and get to bed by 10pm each night. I still use melatonin most nights and of course anxiety meds but my life is pretty stable nowadays although I still struggle at times. I ask people daily for work how they sleep and try to offer suggestions for poor sleep patterns. Sleep is so important and I really try to make sure I sleep well most nights so I can function even better.