Sunday, July 18, 2010

Sleepless in Brighton

I want you to know that I'm still on duty: keeping the night watch so you can all rest easy in your beds. You probably were already doing that (unless you are one of my transatlantic friends, in which case hello, I hope you are having a nice day), but I'm just saying. It reminds me of working night shifts when I was an auxilliary nurse in a psychiatric unit. We had to do a month of nights every so often and by the end of one of those I felt like one of the undead, a lone, prowling creature of the night (though when I was working shifts there were usually others prowling on the ward and we would play drafts together). By the time I got used to ordinary life it was time for night shifts again.

It is an hour later than it says on blogger, by the way - just so you don't think I'm bleating about being up a few minutes after midnight. Even the seagulls have stopped their ullulations, and the barbequeuing revellers a few gardens away have gone inside. Mr. Signs has been asleep for over two hours, a good thing too as he is off to Shrink school again tomorrow. They are doing Personality Disorders this weekend and he has brought home one of those at-a-glance print-outs. I've been studying it trying to work out whether I'm Borderline, Narcissistic or Schizoid and have decided I'm none of them, especially not Schizoid, but everyone else I know is somewhere on the spectrum.

On the other hand, just looking at the column View of Self: Borderline people are helpless victim/caretaker/unloveable, Narcissists are special/inferior and worthless, Schizoids are outsider, "alien"/independent and self-sufficient/little needy baby.

No question about it, tonight I am definitely Schizoid. And suddenly blissfully tired. It is 1.43, whatever Blogger says.

7 comments:

Zhoen said...

Oh, poor dear, not again. My dear one suffers from this as well. Thankfully, we both do the recorded books to sleep to, so neither of us minds if the other needs it. Headphones wouldn't work here either.

Self hypnosis?

trousers said...

I think I'm Avoidant.

Fire Bird said...

I took the next shift after yours last night - awake from 3.00am for ages ruminating/ panicking etc. Teach me to say I don't suffer with this at the moment...

Cusp said...

Oh no ! Think we all have boust of this: probably do our 'shift' and seems you're first on rota at the moment. No consolation to you :O((

Mim said...

My personality becomes disordered every day.

Waking at three in the morning as I often do now, I'm not sure who I am until I turn on the light, go down to the kitchen and eat something, come back to bed, maybe write a few words, read, and with luck get back to sleep.

Schizoid you? I don't believe it. This post wasn't a hallucination, was it?

Kind regards from Mim

trousers said...

It was my turn for sleeplessness last night. Awake for spells at 1, 3, 4, 5am, punctuated by the occasional weird dream.

Reading the Signs said...

Zhoen, I'm on an insomnia roll (last night as well) - it's as though it just has to run its course. I've been told I'm a very bad candidate for hypnosis!

Trousers, I wasn't sure if Avoidant was actually one of the disorders but just looked it up and it is. And also, I remember we all did that "test" a while back.

Fire Bird, the three o'clock shift is the worst. I did that one last night - as well as the midnight and the five o'clock one. I think I should definitely get paid overtime.

Cusp, the supervisor seems unclear as to which shift I should be on so is putting me on all of them, giving me an hour or two off here and there.

Trousers, it looks as though Super has got you doing similar shifts to me at the moment. We should get the union onto this.

Mim, no I'm not really the Schizoid type, am I? It was a temporary state I fastened onto in the small hours.

There is something about three in the morning - it bites us all at some point.