SLEEP…You’re No Friend of Mine

I can remember the days when sleep and I were such good friends. I loved him and he loved me…we lived in harmony. Now a days it is like we are in this endless battle. He likes to come and go as he pleases leaving me either exhausted (and depressed) or oversleeping (and depressed). I have always heard that a person needs 8 hours of sleep since I was a kid. My therapist tells me that isn’t true. Some people function better on less sleep than that but that you have to have more than 90 mins straight of rest to enter REM sleep. I have noticed that I really do function better off of 4-6 hours of sleep. If I sleep more than 6 it gets easy to just continue sleeping. I have to say oversleeping with my depression is probably the worst thing I can do…my darkness feeds off of it. I sometimes envision my depression as this dark mass that just looms over me like a shadow and sometimes it is whispering in my ear and when ever I give it what it wants it grows immensely. I have completely allowed my depression to consume my life. It manages me. The funny thing about it is at the time I do not realize I am feeding my depression. I am convinced that I am completely exhausted and that I am choosing the healthier choice by allowing myself sleep when I can get it. Maybe that’s my brains way of rationalizing it…I don’t really know, but that is what happens. I am determined to win this battle with sleep though. Psychiatrist wants to put me on sleeping medication if I can’t get it to regulate. I have been on sleeping medication before and I hated it. It made me feel like a zombie. I do not want that again. I think I should name my depression since I am not supposed to use the word depression so much anymore. I am leaning toward Neraka or Moriti. Neraka means abyss in Indonesian and Moriti is shadow in Sesotho. I decided to look up these two words in other languages and these two stood out to me because they sound like sinister names for characters in science fiction novels. I like them both not sure which one to choose they both are good choices for my darkness. I will let you people know what I decide next post.