No Sleep...

I periodically do this thing where I decide that it's just not worth it to go to bed.  It's a bad habit, and I'm perpetuating that bad habit once again tonight.  I'm no longer in school.  The need for all-nighters has passed, and yet I still pull them, and mostly because of OCD.

This is how I ended up making the decision tonight:  I have an appointment at 8am.  Before I go to that appointment I'd like to shower, which means that, even though I have gotten my shower time down to under 30 minutes, I should probably be sure to be up and about by about 5:30 to make time for all the other OCD shenanigans that usually end up taking place before/after my shower and while I get ready.  That way I can be ready to leave by about 7:00/7:15 for my 8am appointment.  Woo.

Still not really a reason to stay up all night, right?  Well, there's more.  I woke up late today and had to head out to my office session without showering, which is something I like to before leaving the house for any reason.  This means that once I got back, I had no time limit, no hour that I had to shower by, because I didn't have to be anywhere.  And because I have grown to dislike showering so strongly, I just put it off and put it off and put it off, along with all the other activities that I felt like I couldn't tackle til after showering.  So as it gets later and later, the idea of having to shower, go to bed, and immediately shower again just seems pointless and daunting.  OCD says I can't sleep in my bed unless I shower; it also says that I should shower before my morning appointment.  And I don't want to take a second shower in the morning for virtually no reason other than OCD.  So I decide not to sleep.  Because I can't lie down in my bed until I have showered, but having to shower now and then again in a few hours seems like more than I can bear.

Oh, and I forgot to mention - in order to really actually sleep,  I have to take my Seroquel.  But it's hard for me to wake up in the morning if I do take it, especially if I have to get up really early.  So taking the Seroquel seems ill-advised if I want to make it to my appointment on time in the morning AND get ready beforehand.  So even if I could lay down in my bed, I probably wouldn't be able to fall asleep...

So here I am, writing about my OCD-induced all-nighter, while kind of wishing I could just lay down to relax my muscles and rest, even if I can't sleep.

I know that I will probably regret this tomorrow.  I will be tired and when I am tired my OCD gets worse.  I am at my best when I have a fairly normal schedule and go to bed and get up in the morning at a decent hour.  It's when I let things get all out of order like this that things get harder to manage.  Day and night begin to blend together, and I begin to use compulsive activity as some sort of artificial and unhelpful substitute for the structure that I'm missing.  

So here's a goal for this next week:  I will try harder to maintain a more normal schedule each day so that I don't end up in situations like the one I am in now.  When tempted to procrastinate showering, going to bed, or getting up the morning, I will try to remember what happens when I do this - a downward spiral of compulsivity and disrupted scheduling...