What it's like to be unable to sleep

I am desperate for sleep. It's been three days since I slept. Actually, I fell asleep not long ago for about 5 minutes. I had a dream that was so vivid that when someone spoke to me in the dream, I woke up. I am supposed to have my first ever appointment with a therapist tomorrow at 11:30. At 5:00 this afternoon, she sent me an email telling me that my doctor still hasn't sent a referral. I sent all the information needed to my doctor last week and sent it again as soon as I got the email. Why is health care so filled with ways to prevent you from getting health care in the US? So if something makes no sense here, chalk it up to lack of sleep. I am so desperate for sleep that I rummaged around in the medicine cabinet and found some muscle relaxers and took one. I hope that does the trick. Then I realized that even though I'm not hungry, I can't remember when I last ate. It definitely wasn't today. Could it have been yesterday? It could have been but I don't remember yesterday well enough. I spent most of yesterday trying and failing to sleep. I'm eating the bagel bites I put in the toaster oven as I write this. Just in case I need food. I couldn't find anything that I could cook more quickly and nothing sounds good anyway but I thought of the bagel bites when I saw them in the freezer and remembered how my friend's mom used to make them for us after we had been swimming or something. Amy was my best friend back then. We got caught skipping school once. I should say that she got caught. My dad was at work and my mom was sitting in the sofa in the corner in the dark and was unaware. Amy got in all kinds of trouble. I felt bad for her. Back before the election four years ago, I was still on Faceplace and Amy found me there. I was so disappointed that she had grown up to be a Republican. Her greatest goal in life is to have money and nice things. Where was the depth? What had happened to her? Maybe there had never been any depth or maybe she just ...I don't know. Sorry Amy if you ever come across this but you won't. Your world isn't the same one I live in.   Part of the problem with my inability to sleep, rather, I think one of the things that contributes to it is that I have too many things I want to do.   I have too many interests. My mind reels with ideas.   I lay down to sleep and I'm so exhausted but my brain is frenetic with activity and thoughts.   Last night I found a neurobiologist at Stanford that has some podcasts or videocasts about sleep issues. I started watching one and got super excited.   Then I started thinking about going back to school. I only got my bachelor's degree though I had planned to go to Michigan. Things got complicated. Anyway, I started thinking how much I loved neurobiology when I took a course at UAB.   There are probably all kinds of pre-requisites though that I don't have because I got my degree in biological anthropology. I minored in British and English literature.   I had some biology of course. UAB is one of the few universities in the country that alllow undergrads to work with cadavers.   I used to know every single muscle insertion and its name, every nerve in the brain and that sort of thing but of course I've forgotten them now. I used drawings t help me remember them and those drawings were good I wish I knew where they were.   This is what it's like to not have slept in 3 days. My eyes feel swollen and dry.   Now that I've finished the bagel bites, I suddenly find myself hungry. How does that make any sense?   When people tell me they have insomnia, I don't even mention my experience with it because it's so extreme.   In my dream we were going to play this dicing game. My neice was visiting from Georgia and she kept coughing and laughing at the same time. She saw the dice game on my phone and said, "This is going to change the world."   I replied, "It alreay has." I then asked her if she had Covid. She said no. I finally realized she was cleaning the kitchen and said, "Are you cleaning the kitchen?" She looked stricken and said, "Yes, sorry." I replied, "continue on."   There was a guy whose name I had on the tip of my tongue wh0 had arrived at my house at like 2:00 when the game wasn't to start until 6:00.   There were two other friends who were coming an I texted them to let them know to come at 6:00.   The guy who had been there all day was irritated and asked me when we were going to play and I said at 6:00 and woke up. I jumped out of bed beoieving that I was hosting a dice game (the one that Keeley had said was going to change the world. I was so sure that such a thing existed that I opened my phone to look for it. It didn't exist.   Then my contractor who hasn't finished the work he was supposed to do in December finally texted me back in broken English and told me he wasn't a bad person. So I told him I had only been kidding when I threatened t curse him and that I knew he was a good person. ]   He swears he is coming tomorrow at 8, another reason I need to sleep.   But when I made the bagel bites I noticed there is a layer of dust on the crock ot and the toaster oven and see all the junk my dad has left laying everywhere. My dad is starting to forget things. He lost the contract and papers for the remodel.   I went into his "office" and thee is so much trash in there that he has moved our IRS filings stuff up stairs and starting cluttering up my crafts/computer room.   I know now that I have to clean up his office or he will ruin my crafts / gaming room too. There's something wrong with him. Even before he started getting dementia, he wuld just drop bits of paper or styrofoam on the floor and never pick up after himself.   I have to put a stop to his encroachment on mine and Ben's crafts/gameing room. I have so many things I have to do and so many things I want to do. I'm overshelmed.   I need sleep. I need help but I'm unable to cncentrate long enough to choose a starting point.   I am lost in the world of no sleep. This is what it's like not t sleep for thre days.