How I made it through sleep deprivation

‘I am perfect’ ‘I am human’

The person who inked ‘I am perfect’ was at her highest. The one who inked ‘I am human’ is slowly getting back there. 

I have those two tattoos on my arm inches – and years – apart, and for a long time, it seemed like a lifetime apart. 

So, what happened? 

Sleep deprivation. 

The entire story is over a year-long, with so many twists and complications that if I hadn’t lived through it, I wouldn’t have believed anyone telling it. 

I’ll try to write it down as clearly as possible. 

My office was in a basement, without any natural light. Because of this, I was allowed to work from home several days a week – for the two years that they employed me. Although it was not ideal, I was able to keep my health in check. That was while I was working for a private company. 

Last May, I moved to a state-owned entity – that’s all the details I will give about the company, as these are not relevant to the story. After the move, I was no longer allowed to work from home, without any explanation. I explained my reasons for the countless requests for having a proper working space, but I was ignored. And although I asked for help with any chance I’ve had, none was provided. 

After ten months of no natural light, I ended up sleeping 3-4 hours per day (24 hours). For the last two months of those ten, I took a double dose of Melatonin and a double dose of another over-the-counter sleeping aid to get 5-6 hours of sleep of poor quality, waking up several times a night. 

By the end of February, my body was barely keeping alive. But just that, staying alive. I wasn’t doing anything for days in a row for lack of energy and motivation. There were whole days with me doing nothing. I was going to the office and coming back, but at the end of the day, I couldn’t recall doing anything. I wasn’t working, I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t even losing time scrolling through social media.  For months I was eating once a day and crap food, if I was able to eat at all. 

I was sitting there, my brain blank, my body drained of energy to live. My body was shooting down.

And I didn’t realise it until it was way too late.

That is the tricky part, seeing the danger of the situation. Because the changes are so slow, and it’s not something that hits you like a brick, you don’t see the degradation.  

Throughout all the hardships of my life, I was never depressed. Yes, life was hard sometimes, but I never lost hope or the spirit to fight, get out there, and give my best.  

But now, I was hating myself for being so weak, for my foggy brain, for my inactivity, practically for everything. And that came from a person with a tattoo with ‘I am perfect’, who was convinced that the Universe spins around her for most of her life.

I had no hope, and I saw no way out. I was trapped.

Help came by chance. A person who had nothing to do with my workplace overheard me talking about how I felt and contacted well-being support for me.

At the same time, scared by the way I was and realising that I was not going to stay alive for long if going on like that, I contacted my GP. Hearing the entire situation, he put me off work for three months, with ‘you either go out in daylight and exercise, or I’m putting you on antidepressants’.

And I’ve done just that.

After two months, last week was the first time I slept for a ‘normal’ six hours without waking up over the night. For seven days in a row.

More and more, the Univers is getting back at spinning around me. I have hope and the strength to take all that life has to throw at me with a smile and a ‘Man-up, girl, you got this’.

I also have a new tattoo: I am human. I am still perfect, that hasn’t changed; but I know now that I am made of flesh and blood and that this body and this mind need looking after.

And now, to the reason for writing this text. It’s not to complain or explain my condition and lack of activity for a year.

My shrink – a lovely and awesome lady whom I apologised a thousand times for calling her that; too many American movies – advised me to write about my experience. Most people, even medical professionals, associate daylight with sunlight. The most common advice I was given was to take vitamin D to fix my sleeping issues because they didn’t understand the correlation between daylight and the Circadian Rhythm. An internet search defines the following: “Circadian rhythm is the 24-hour internal clock in our brain that regulates cycles of alertness and sleepiness by responding to light changes in our environment.”

Lack of natural light and its ill effects on the body are more common than we think, yet they are hardly known and ignored most of the time, even by medical professionals.  

Sleep deprivation will destroy a human body and can kill, and lack of daylight is one of the most common causes.

My hope in sharing my experience is that you recognise the symptoms and take action before you end up half alive like I was.