Monday, February 21, 2011

Because mornings are never going to be fantastic...

...I will probably never stop bitching about them. Here's a description of how I generally feel in the morning:

I literally feel like I have been punched in the brain about 1000 times, every morning when I wake up. Then, once I'm out of bed, it's like a full squadron of aircraft, really old ones with grinding engines screaming are bearing down on my senses and carpet bombing my ability to think. What the heck...I should at least get to drink like 8 cocktails before feeling this way...gah...

Hilariously, there have been a few times in my life when I have actually been "the morning person": when I've dated people who don't get out of bed until noon! In those relationships I get this terrible reputation for being perky, ambitious and ready to take on the world in the morning. I'm the one SPRINGING out of bed at 9am, talking non-stop. And that's the key, really...I simply cannot function before about 8:30-9am. It's never been possible. But boy, if you let me roll on my body's natural schedule, BAM, here comes Mrs. Rollins with a to-do list!

I have tried going to bed earlier (and laying there...sometimes for hours)...I have tried other ways of altering my sleep schedule. I've tried getting a better bed. I've tried coffee. I've tried having jobs that start later--oh wait, that's not true, because NONE OF THEM DO! I have tried getting more exercise to make me more tireder. I even take a migraine medication at night that allegedly sedates a person, but unfortunately my body seems to have adjusted to that effect just fine, so sedation no longer occurs. I seriously and truly believe that I was born with some kind of genetic programming that makes it literally impossible to alter the schedule that my body seems determined to adhere to. I'm frickin' 35 after all...I've had a few years to observe and attempt to alter this phenomenon. I'm not a teenager, feeling oppressed because getting out of bed is like so hard (tho' even teens have legit biological reasons for feeling that way!).

I DO have the ability to make myself get places in the morning, regardless of my very real misery. It requires extreme effort and doing that every morning really sucks. The harder I push it, the more likely I am to forget things, drop things, accidentally hurt myself.

It DOES help to take my ADHD meds when the alarm goes off, that is absolutely true. But it does not solve the problem, it only keeps me from screaming, destroying small galaxies or becoming a cannibal while the squadron bears down on my sanity. That's a huge improvement and I appreciate its value, but what I would really prefer is a way to just turn the fucking ON switch on. Fully on. None of this dimmer switch "now I can stumble through the dark" shit.

I truly have no ill will toward employers who can't relate to my experience of mornings. Business starts when it starts. I get that. I work to accommodate that.

It's one of those possibly ADHD-related issues that exists within the painful realization that the rest of life would be so much easier to just attend to if some of the seemingly small things weren't so hard sometimes. This isn't a poor me rant...these are the words of a person who enjoys doing a good job, helping people, making the world a better place...I'd just like to be able to spend all that energy that I have to spend on mornings, on THOSE goals.

It's one of the mind's unwinnable games.