I live in an apartment block. Normally, this isn't really an issue at all - most of my neighbours are seemingly nice, quiet people. Thank goodness, too!! I honestly don't know how I would cope if I had to live in a flat surrounded by party people. I've already tried living in a house with people like that and it damn near drove me over the edge.
However, things have become a bit special around here in the last few weeks. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being woken up twice during the night by some woman sitting and smoking right outside our ground floor bedroom window and talking on the phone to someone about some incredibly personal things I'm fairly sure she wouldn't want complete strangers listening to. I got so frustrated I ended up going outside at 2am to ask her to be quiet and go away. Luckily, she was understanding and went back inside as soon as she saw me.
Tonight has been a bit more spectacular. I'm currently on a very high dose of prednisone, and for those of you who have ever been on it, you may be familiar with the insomnia that comes with it. Narcolepsy and insomnia, what a team. I've been averaging about 5 - 6 hours sleep a night for the last week, which is great! For normal people. For me, it's about the equivalent of maybe 2 hours sleep a night. So I'm starting to run on empty and I'm not looking forward to how it's going to continue to affect me in the weeks to come. I can't even nap effectively... I just lie there and close my eyes and drift in and out, without ever actually falling alseep. It's like a mild delerium.
Not only that, but one of our neighbours has decided that tonight, from 11pm - now (5am) is a brilliant time to have an enormous fight. So far I'm pretty sure she's thrown him out twice, at least, and has also gone out onto the street to continue discussing their issues in a very loud voice. For the last hour they've been fighting in their flat, and it's mainly the woman who's voice has been undulating in dynamic. I did try to get back to sleep, but once I was woken up, my brain immediately switched into AWAKE NOW NOW NOW mode and that's just been the end of it.
It's been a while since I've had hardcore sleeping problems like this but I am not enjoying it and not looking forward to experiencing the longer term effects. I've been trying to keep calm about it, knowing that the prednisone would affect my sleep like this, but there's only so long I can go on tiny amounts of unfulfilling sleep. It could not have come at a worse time... everything is happening at school due it being the end of the year, the final concert for the year is this weekend and I play like rubbish when I've had no sleep, I have a uni presentation this week that I have no idea about, there's engagement things to organise... plus, you know, when all the other stuff is taken care of, I want to function. I want to be able to sit down with my fiancee and have a conversation that I can follow without my attention span faltering every 10 seconds. I want to feel like I'm in control of my life, rather than walking around in a daze. I want to tell the people upstairs to shut the fuck up and have some consideration for those around them.
I hate narcolepsy and I hate drugs and I hate not being able to sleep and I hate that my brain won't shut up and I hate that I'm overtired and I hate that my body just wants to shut down but my body also won't let itself shut down. I just want to curl into a ball and sleep for a week and make it all better.