I had a driving lesson this morning. I haven’t had one for a couple of weeks and feared the worst for the general public. Today though I was more switched on than usual, I wasn’t as panicky and all round had a much better lesson. How can this be? I’m consistantly nervous and Driving Miss Daisy but today was better and there was only one explanation. I’d had a full nights sleep. I fell asleep with Reilly at 20.45 woke up at 23.45 thinking that was my lot and that it was 6am. Imagine my excitement when I realised, Reilly allowing, I could actually rack up an incredible extra 7 hours!! That’s exactly what I did.
Sleep deprivation is the worst. Physically I can take being tired but mentally is a different story. What a horrible, moaning, ratty cow I become when I get less than my (sometimes if I’m lucky) 5 hours. Some days I look at my social media and switch it back off because I literally hate everyone, I put TV on and switch that off because I hate everyone. I lose approximately 70% of my vocabulary and recently actually questioned how I had spelt the word ‘the’ because it just didn’t look right. It’s depressing, literally. It aggravates anxiety and whips up a vile vicious circle of over thinking, insomnia and exhaustion.
I read some jolly old snippets about sleep deprivation today that filled me with horror, I’ll share a few for you:
Five hours or less sleep nearly doubled the risk of death in particular cardiovascular disease in one study. Like I needed to read that one given our family history.
Chronic sleep loss puts you at risk of heart disease, heart attack, heart failure, irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, stroke and diabetes. Whopppeeee NOT!
Makes you look like Gollum (FACT).
The fact that my post entitled Grim about dying and leaving Reilly is one of my biggest fears this doesn’t help.
I get to have all this and do North East Hearts with Goals, Alphabetically Autistic and keep the house ticking over (kind of) which makes me tired just writing it.
It changes me as a person, my whole character. I have recently while out shopping in sleep deprived state actually wanted to hit a woman with a 4 pack of beans for looking (for more than 5 seconds) at Reilly kicking off and straddling the big bit of the trolley like a school gym horse. I settled for bumping her with said trolley.
Tadaaaaaa!
It’s just no good. I’m not an angry person. I’m laid back, I hate confrontation, I like peace. I want to throw all of that out of the window and go on the rampage in my sleep deprived states. At any given moment someone could be one judgey tut from a decking.
You can help me though by supporting our bid to make a film with to educate the general public. Not just any film though, a clever, witty film with input from autistic people. Help them stop me from wanting to pummel tins, chickens, eggs off them, help me to stop telling people to fuck off for their blatant ignorance to the situation in front of them. Help them to be less judgemental.
#prayforIan (driving instructor)
UPDATE!! I passed my driving test thanks to Ian and film looks like it might actually happen!! How exciting. Support our crowdfunder project if you can.
The Life of Reilly 