Sleeeeeep

It's a long-established fact that I don't function well when I'm tired. I don't run at full capacity, my attention span shrinks and my patience diminishes. It makes little things considerably more irritating than they normally would be. I find myself snapping at objects, events and people, which simply isn't me. It often scares me quite how much it effects my judgement and personality.

I've spent much of the past three years keeping my sleep patterns in order, to the extent that I'd wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, not tired or yawning or stretching but up and at 'em and ready to go. At the start, when I first realised how rested I was feeling, I was amazed at the difference it made to my whole existence. My brain felt like it was running at full speed, the world seemed more colourful and I felt much more capable of dealing with the stuff day-to-day life throws at us.

For one reason or another, for the past two months my sleep has been broken or shorter than it should be, and this has had a massive effect on my mood. Stress at work has compounded this, and occasionally I feel like a seething mass of shit and growling. I know it's steadily been getting worse for the past couple of months, actually since I found out we were getting this new flat, but yesterday it was brought to my attention in a novel way.

I took a day off work yesterday to keep an appointment with a BT engineer who was coming between 8am and 1pm to activate my line and broadband in the flat. I have a houseguest at the moment and we spent the morning relaxing and enjoying each other's company, waiting for the engineer to turn up. Midday rolled around and I started getting irritable; I knew it was unlikely they'd arrive now. I started getting more and more anxious and tetchy, standing at the flat window watching the building site to distract me from my increasing anger.

This is not the first time BT have fucked me about. I'm not going into detail here but it's fair to say that the corporation itself are massive, massive cunts. It was their fuckup, their mistake, their blatant lie to cover their tracks and I know I was justified in being annoyed with them. Normally I'd be happy to let the anger flow, but I was aware how uncomfortable my guest was getting and tried to stay calm for their sake.

I fundamentally dislike letting my dark moods effect other people. Not that it happens often but it's usually daughter, bless her, who's the only one around and sometimes takes the flak from my frustrations. Yesterday I could see the effect my mood was having on my guest and it bothered me greatly to see her uncomfortable around me, to the extent that I actually left the room at one point so she didn't witness my blunt and forthright attempts to squeeze two day's missed wages out of poor Sonya at BT's call centre in the Phillipines.

Later in the evening, we ordered a huge batch of Chinese food and a cab to pick it up and deliver it to us. I sat at my desk gradually getting more and more hungry, eventually realising it was twenty minutes late. I called the cab office - my colleagues, my workmates, the Mickey-Mouse-piece-of-shit motherfuckers I work with to chase my order. "No one knows where you live." LIKE FUCK! Goddamn it that pissed me off, can you tell? Why not call me, why not ask all the drivers where I live? At least seven or eight drivers have dropped me off at home in the past two months! ARGH!

Anyway, after the phone call I had to get out of the house and calm down. The day's stresses had taken their toll and I found myself bubbling up under the surface. I put on my coat and hat and stomped out of the flat like a petulant child to wait by the front door for this useless cab driver. Grrrr. Still pissed off about this, how can I let it go? I'll work on that later.

The food turned up, I growled at the driver, gave him his money and went upstairs to get fed. We dished up, laughed at Scrubs and ate lovely lovely food; I had a happy daughter, happy guest and ultimately a happy me.

I'm aware, though, that I'd acted somewhat irrationally and outside my comfort zone, and definitely made my guest feel uncomfortable. We talked about it because we're good friends and we share this kind of stuff; she has good reasons for her reaction, she expressed feeling useless because she couldn't do anything about my mood and uncomfortable because some members of her family let their anger loose and sometimes she's caught up in it. I feel in future I should put some distance between my anger and other people because it's a volatile emotion and one that causes srong reactions in some people. For example, I was visiting some friends - a couple - last year and they had a heated debate about something I considered insignificant but was obviously important enough to them to warrant shouting at each other about... Actually, I think that disagreement was on top of other frustrations they had or hadn't discussed... Anyway, my point is that while they were arguing I felt very uncomfortable, reverting back to a little boy, less than ten years old, scared and frightened by his parent's shouting, swearing and slamming. So I know how easy it is to revert to old personalities or coping strategies when confronted with actions or emotions which make you feel bad. I can definitely relate to that. I'd like to talk to her further about this, actually, as it seems we have similar reactions to similar situations.

The point of this post, though, is to reflect on the fact that when I'm properly rested I act much more rationally and with less emotional reactivity as I do when I'm tired and worn out. This is a big hint to get my arse to bed at more reasonable times, to make sure I get proper rest and solid sleep, to nap when I feel I should and catch up on all the sleep I've missed over the past three months. At least then I can trust my brain to make sound decisions, to emote appropriately and to keep my affairs in order so everyone around me can lead better lives.