I've been doing a lot of research on narcolepsy ever since my sleep study consultation appointment last Friday.
Like most everybody else I thought narcolepsy was just randomly falling asleep when you didn't plan on sleeping. What it really is, is a chronic neurological disorder that prevents the brain from regulating sleep like it should.
Before my appointment I had to fill out a rather large questionnaire. There were a few strange questions on there, like, "Do you lose muscle control when you laugh?"
Honestly, I had never thought of that before and I didn't know what to put so I waited to answer it until I was at my appointment so the doctor could clarify that question. He then asked more specifically, "Do you slur your words when you get excited or after laughing?" And I answered yes to that one. I don't slur when I'm not excited but if you get me excited and laughing I have a hard time getting anything out that is intelligible. Then he asked if my hands felt weak when I was laughing or if I was particularly angry. I answered yes for that one too. Often when I laugh really hard I'll drop what I'm holding or will have to put it down to not drop it and sometimes my knees will buckle when I laugh a bit and I can't help it so I have to stop.
I thought that was normal for everyone but apparently it's not. This is something known as "cataplexy" and is very, very common in narcoleptics.

He then asked me if I ever hear things that might be from a dream before I'm actually fully asleep. This happens to me all the time. Whenever I lay down to go to sleep it doesn't take long before I start to hear things, people's voices that aren't there or just noises from every day activities that I am not doing at the moment (and the house is completely quiet because Reid is asleep). When I wake up, sometimes I will still hear things for a few minutes before actually standing up and getting out of bed. Sometimes, I will wake up and still be smelling whatever it is that I was smelling in my dreams (oddly enough that smell is usually garlic). Apparently, this is called "Hypnagogia".
This is also something that is common for narcoleptic people. Narcoleptics usually go into REM sleep sometimes as soon as 5 minutes after closing their eyes while for normal people it takes about an hour to get to REM sleep. Narcoleptics spend 5 times longer in REM sleep than normal people.

Sleep paralysis is another common symptom. I have only had that happen a couple of times but I have to say, it's seriously THE MOST DISTURBING thing I have ever gone through. The first time it happened, I literally thought I was being possessed by a demon spirit. I opened my eyes in the middle of the night and thought I saw a shadow in the corner, and then it felt like I was being dragged off the bed, so I tried to yell out for Reid but I couldn't. I was completely conscious and flipped out in my head when I realized I couldn't so much as control my own breathing (I was still breathing, the diaphragm is not affected by sleep paralysis but it was so scary to not even be able to take a big gulp of air like I wanted to in that moment even though I was breathing just fine). Again, apparently this is something that is common for people with narcolepsy.

Insomnia is also a symptom as well as sleeping for the recommended amount of time but never feeling rested. These will switch off from what I've been told. I have had bouts of horrible insomnia, but right now it's the excessive daytime sleepiness that is killing me. For the past few months I've been doing well with sleeping for 8 hours a night but I always wake up feeling more tired than when I went to sleep. I have also been waking up with strange bruises that I think are coming from my tossing and turning and hitting myself in my sleep (something that I've done since I was a kid).

That all being said, it's not a mental illness and it's not caused by mental illnesses or any other psychological disorder. It is genetic, pretty sure my grandpa has it and I inherited that from him (fine with me, I love my Papa to death, and this just makes me more like him. Or that is how I've chosen to view it at least). It's caused by a lack of hypocretin in the brain which controls sleep and appetite (this might also explain why I don't "feel" hunger like normal people... suddenly everything about my life is making sense).
It's also not curable (geeze what is it with this body and getting all these diseases that aren't curable or are only found in diabetic, obese old people??? I want a new body...) but the doc told me to not despair, which I really wasn't, I'm fine with living with this as long as there is something that can help the symptoms. Hell, I recently started drinking every night to suppress REM sleep... and I've only had a handful of drinks since July 3rd 2010 (yes, it was that bad of a bender that I remember the exact date). I know it's a fine line to walk with alcohol and sleep disorder but I'm no longer having nightmares that leave me in a cold sweat so I'll continue to have a few ciders before bed until we find another band-aid.

It's really so ironic that I would actually have narcolepsy since all my home-school high school friends used to make fun of me and call me a narcoleptic for falling asleep easily in a crowded room or dosing off during home group classes and stuff. I'm going to hear endless "I told you so's" for a while I'm sure.

So what new things have you learned this week now that I've shared my new tidbits of knowledge?

I got this message from my covert account.
It's weirding me out.

*sorry, pic is tiny. It says it was sent from restlessbutterfly from Shimmerbodycream1 and it asks if I want to be a troll and includes a screen cap from Summer's site*

Am I missing something or does it really not make sense for someone to message this screencap around that's nearly 2 years old? The title of the email was "Troll Recruitment."

And now for an unprotected post (sounds scandalous).

Reid and I will be going on vacation starting April 25th! Thursday night we are going to a special screening of Star Trek: The Next Generation "Best of Both Worlds". We got the last 2 seats that were side-by-side for the viewing. Then we are both taking Friday off and going out of town until Sunday the 28th. I was talking to my grandparents the other night about our get away and how it was more than likely just going to be one night out of town and we would be tent camping to save money and also because it would be fun. Apparently, they didn't like that idea too much, so they insisted on paying for a hotel to stay in and that way we could also have 2 nights out of town (we originally planned on Reid working a lunch/dinner shift Friday in trade for Sunday off and then figured we would just take the whole damn weekend. It's not like we ever get the opportunity to do anything like this). I have a loose itinerary, we will be visiting local wineries, driving Skyline Drive for a bit, maybe even find a cave or two to check out. There's a tobacco shop in Charlottesville (where we will be going) that has some of our favourite smoking tobacco (it's called the "Sherlock Holmes" and it's tobacco that's been soaked in cherries. Has incredibly flavor). I'm going to order a pipe that I know Reid has had his eye on for a year or so and surprise him with it there. (As for those who were in on the other "surprise" I was thinking about, that's off for now). This is the pipe:

The hotel we got is nice. King size bed and a little living room area with a TV. I doubt we will spend much time in it though, we will probably spend a great deal just walking around downtown and the UVA campus (Reid is thinking about going there). I will also get to visit one of my best friends who goes to school there so that will be fun. I'm trying to find out if there is any bands in town or any place that might have live music that weekend. I think that would be fun.
I am so incredibly excited about this vacation it isn't funny. This will be only the 2nd time that we have ever gotten to get away just by ourselves. It's going to be aaaaaamaaaaaazzziiiiiiiiiinnnnngggg! I will try to remember to take lots of pics!

I am so out of shape. I mowed the office yesterday and then walked a few miles with Scully and took her to a dog park with a friend of mine. It was a gorgeous day. I loved getting to walk around and explore new parts of the city I had never seen before. All in all, it was a fantastic day

I'm seriously considering getting a tattoo. I have lots of ideas for ones I want but none of them have ever turned into, "OMG I HAVE TO HAVE THAT ON MY BODY" sort of thing. I've always maintained that I would get a tattoo as soon as I needed one on my body that I wasn't content with just making a print of and hanging on my wall. I'm usually not a fan of script tattoos because for me, I know my mottos change all the time. But there is one quote I would like to have somewhere visible to me (ie. not on my back or something where I can't see it myself). It's a quote from Carl Sagan, "A still more glorious dawn awaits." I don't know, but I just need that as a constant reminder. It's always stuck with me and I can't think of a more kick ass first tattoo than a Carl Sagan quote. After that I'm sure I'll refine my half-sleeve idea I've been tossing around forever (the only problem is my arms are INCREDIBLY stick thin. All the detail I want in my sleeve would be microscopic. Just another motivation to gain weight, the other being roller derby).

Spring has finally arrived in good ol RVA. Yesterday was beautiful.. Today could stand to be a little less warm! I hope this summer is milder than last summer. I'm also going to be selling my car soon and taking Reid's old car. He is getting a 2004 Ford Escape next month. The car he has now is a '94 Toyota Corolla. It has about 170K miles on it. My car is a '98 Chevy Malibu and it only has 86K miles on it (yeah I know, it's amazing). I'm going to be selling mine because we can get more money for it and the Corolla would probably outlast mine anyways (at least that is what my buddies have been telling me and I trust them completely when it comes to cars). Plus, his A/C works better than mine does so I won't melt if this summer turns out to be anything like last summer!

Other than that there really hasn't been anything exciting going on. Just life as usual. Only 17 more days until get away!!!!!! (Yeah I'm so not excited about that at all).

How was everyone else's weekend?

This has been making me so happy all day.

I had some crazy dreams last night, and there were a lot of Xangans in them for whatever reason.

First was @Ghillies_guide. He was being filmed for some sort of MTV Cribs type thing except he was showing off his truck. The weird thing was that he was dressed in that classic white Elvis costume thing and had long hair that was braided into little braids with white beads to match his outfit. He was pretty excited to show off his empty trailer, I didn't quite get it.

Then for some reason I was in Japan with an ex (an "ex" in my dream even though I didn't recognize the person at all; no one I dated in real life) anyways, it didn't look like Japan, it looked like Columbia from Bioshock Infinite with just a ton of little grade school Japanese girls running around giggling. I wanted to get away from everybody so I went through this one door only to realize I walked right into a bedroom and there were 3 people going at it and talking in the bed so I ducked behind this half wall so they couldn't see me, and also because I spotted my fuzzy blanket I liked so much so I decided to just hide and cover myself up with that to get a nap. Turns out it was @TheTheologiansCafe and @Celestial_Teapot (dude, this is the second time CT has showed up in my dreams for no fucking reason) having the 3some with some other unknown female. I didn't '"see" them but I heard them talking and in my dream I recognized their "voices". Anyways the conversation turned and they started talking about me and CT said that he was personally going to write the American Embassy because he thought I would be a much better fit to be an ambassador in Japan than my "ex". I got all excited.

Then I woke up.

The end.

I just had a mini-revelation this morning and I want to try to get it into words before it gets too complicated.

I am thankful for my clinical depression. Actually, today I kind of love it.

Weird thing to say, right? This is why I thought this today:

This morning I woke up depressed. I usually wake up most mornings depressed but today it was particularly bad. I dread everything out of initial instinct, this makes things hard at times, and is something that I know is unbearable for my partner (sorry, hun, I'm working on it). For the most part, it's out of my control. It is one of those things that isn't a problem with me, my personality, my behavior, or conscience (all of which can play roles in depression but in my case does not). In my case, my depression is about 85% chemical imbalance issues (the other 15% caused by real life, stressful situations; but these numbers like 66.7% of all statistics are made up), and I am not currently taking any SSRI's for it. This may or may not change soon, but I've always tried to tackle my emotional issues from the inside out. Instead of medicating myself, I've spent the past 3 years doing intense, albeit mainly solo, introspection and analysis. Basically, I have been slowly concentrating on figuring out why I feel the way I do about things, and if it has something to do with things that have happened in real life, or if my brain is just overloading on unhappy chemicals that is causing me to feel down or react to situations in ways that aren't quite rational at all.
It's been a long process. I have probably gotten it all very wrong and haven't been doing it the "right" way but we will leave that up for a later debate.

But here is why I am thankful for my depression:

I appreciate the little things more, the small little details. When I'm depressed, I don't feel like going out of my way for anything, I mainly just want to hide in a hole in the ground and never come out. So when someone goes out of their way to do something for me, I immediately notice, because I don't go out of the way for myself and I don't expect other people to either. Growing up, I was always taught depression was a sin. Yes, a sin. It was something I could control because I bring it on myself through my heart and through my actions (I will concede to a point that this can be true in some cases. Sometimes depression is brought on by the wrongs we have committed, but this is not the type of depression I am talking about here. That's guilt). Depressed people in the social construct I grew up in were ostracized basically, nobody should associate with the depressed person because they obviously have something grievous going on in their lives that could cause you to stumble and potentially risk your relationship with God.
Because of growing up and believing this, small acts of kindness that other people go out of their way to do for me just kind of blow me away. If I wasn't depressed, I probably would take a lot of people's kindness and generosity for granted. I grew up to believe that being depressed was an ultimate form of selfishness, but honestly, I would probably be more selfish if I wasn't depressed.

It makes me appreciate the people in my life more. I KNOW I am one tough beast to handle. I KNOW that sometimes, I make every minute a nightmare for anyone within 100 miles of me. I know this because I have to live with myself, and I am stuck having to hear my own thoughts all the time, most of the time I spare that from others (trust me, no one wants to know what really goes on inside my brain, everything that I share is extremely filtered, even if it doesn't come across that way). When I am at my worst, I am in awe of the people who have chosen to stick by me and I make sure they know that. Reid deserves every gold star in the world, and then some. I'm serious, he is one of the best people on this entire planet. Is he perfect? No, far from it, but that makes me love him more. This past Sunday he had a pretty rough day. He woke up grumpy (rare!), he lashed out at me when there was no need (rarer still, but I was content to just let him go on cuz I had my cereal, I was just fine) he threw little fits and nit picked and then went to work. He came home that night and was a little better. He apologized for how he acted, I just hugged him and said, "No, seriously THANK YOU for being the difficult one today! I needed a break from playing that role. Also, thank you for how much crap you put up with from me." And we laughed and everything was great. Everyone should have a Reid in their life, and that is why I like sharing.

I am thankful for my depression because it reminds me that I am MUCH more than just my illness. Like I said, this morning I woke up depressed, and there wasn't any reason for me to be feeling that way. My life is good right now. I am absolutely surrounded with so many positive people who love me, who care for my well-being physically and emotionally (here on this site that has been more of a home to me than any physical building as well as in real life) and will do anything to help improve my life for my ultimate happiness. If I hadn't woken up depressed this morning, I probably wouldn't have spent all this time being thankful for how much my life doesn't suck. Depression is a part of me, yes, but it is not what ultimately defines me as a person. I'm pretty sure (or at least I hope) that when I die, the loved ones behind aren't going to put, "Here lies the gunslinger, the depressed." (Although, I would find that quite humorous). Depression is something that at times does hold me back, sometimes I let it negatively impact my life when I shouldn't. I don't have to be passive about it but sometimes I am. My ultimate goal is to not let it hold me back though, and that is a battle every day. I will gladly fight it, with whatever weapons I have, medication or just sheer force of will.

The fall and winter months remind me a lot of my depression. The trees lose their leaves and life seems to stop and decay sets in. I think those days are the most beautiful. The clouds can be weeping and hugging the earth for comfort and sometimes that can be a suffocating feeling for some humans, but I imagine sometimes that those clouds are crying tears of happiness and rain ultimately brings about life. So what appears on the surface to be something sad, is really something quite beautiful. The grey weather that matches my grey feelings gives me hope because with all this metaphorical rain in my life, I'm bound to have one beautiful garden before it is all said and done.

That is my hope. And this is something I know I will be reminding myself of often.

Today, I am depressed but life couldn't be more beautiful than it is right now.

I have that restlessness in my spirit again. I'm a nomad and I'm coming up on renewing my lease for a second time which just kind of makes me a bit sick in my stomach to think about. "I'll be here for at least one more year." *shudder*
This city has been my second least favourite place to live (TN is the top slot). There's just a lot of bad memories here. Years of spiritual abuse. Years of physical abuse. Every day I'm reminded of what I've survived, and that makes me both proud and sad. Most of the time when I go out I'm constantly looking out to avoid the people I knew growing up. Home schoolers are freaking every where though and I always run into them when I'm least expecting it which is usually uncomfortable and awkward. I will go out of my way to avoid some of these people. I want to move some place new. Some place free from bad memories and the people who brought them about. I long for new, fresh air. I need to get out of here, but I know it will be some time before that is feasible. But one day, it will happen.

A friend of mine recently helped host a spiritual abuse awareness week with other bloggers like Rachel Held Evans. My friend and I grew up in the same cult (if I've said it once, I will say it a million times more; Sovereign Grace Ministries is NOT a church, it is a very dangerous cult. They perpetuate serious spiritual abuse by way of their culture). Reading the blogs and the stories just ripped me open all over again, and it made me sad that I am still too scared to tell my story. I could have, I could have but I didn't. It would have been a safe place to tell my story but I still feel like my lips are sewn shut. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth when I try to talk about it. I hope one day I can talk about it, I know it would probably help. There were so many stories that sounded like I could have told them, and it was very eye-opening for me because sometimes I forget to factor in all that stuff when I approach my anxiety. Sometimes I will be triggered by something that doesn't make sense to me because I blocked out all that, but reading other people having the same anxiety issues I have and realizing there is a direct correlation between that and the type of abuse I withstood for the better part of 18 years it suddenly all made sense. I even had Reid read some of the stories because I felt that it better explained parts of me I couldn't explain myself.
I'm still working through all of that stuff. The processing of it tends to be constant but on a background level, but sometimes it will consume me to the point where I can't move.

I've withdrawn a lot in recent weeks. I can't remember the last time I talked to anyone in my family. I don't even talk to Reid's parents as much at work anymore; I tend to stay upstairs instead of coming down in the afternoons and working the downstairs desk since I can hear the phones to answer them from my office. I feel my hermitiness creeping back in, and on one hand I don't much mind it because I could use some alone time, but on the other, I know it's an extremely unhealthy thing for me to let it get too far. I've come a long long way on my social anxiety to the point where I don't actively think of all the excuses I could use to decline an invitation out, most of the time I accept and look forward to going out and being with people. I'm so proud of myself!

I've gotten back into gaming some. I really miss playing video games. Working at GameStop for a year really burned me out on the subject entirely but Bioshock Infinite has me itching again to play more games. I am loving Infinite right now, I can't wait to finish it! I'll probably go back to Skyrim after, I get so sucked into that game. I love it. I'm still pretty bummed that the South Park game got pushed back, but hopefully the delays will mean they are trying to push out a better game. I'd rather wait then have a buggy game or something with a subpar story/play.

Tonight, Reid and I are going to sit down and pick out a weekend for a get away (I'm hoping we can do something towards the end of the month or early May at the latest). We've only had 1 vacation together that was just the two of us (no family) and I was sick as a dog the entire time. I'm going to stock up on vitamin C and take loads of that before our vacation haha! I'm excited. I think we will probably just end up going to Charlottesville and visit UVA. It's only an hour and a half away and it's beautiful out there with lots of wineries, I just hope we can find a hotel or B&B that's affordable. If not we might just tent camp it up there (weather permitting). In any case, I am really looking forward to having something to work towards. I try to have at least one thing to look forward to, far off or near, it just helps me stay motivated and hopeful.