My new pillow! (and a bunch of personal stuff)

I absolutely LOVE this thing.  It's more comfortable than my regular pillow, and I can listen to my choice of nighttime sounds without having them blaring from some speaker across the room.

I will admit that I did stick to Harry Potter the first time I tried it, because it was what I was used to and I was too wiped out (I have a cold) to test the CDs I got with it.  My husband tried one called "Cat Nap", and despite his initial amusement at the sort of hypnosis aspect of it, found it working on him.  He and I have both ALWAYS said that we could never be hypnotized (I still don't think I can, because I'm very contrary by nature), but after using "Cat Nap," he wasn't so sure about himself anymore.  At any rate, he slept well, I slept well, and a happy night was had by all.  I'll give him a noodge to post about "Cat Nap" himself over on his blog.

This isn't related to the insomnia or tinnitus thing, but I just had to report (because I've talked to some people who swing by this blog, even if you haven't officially joined) that, shockingly, I was awarded Social Security Disability Insurance on Friday.  I have been trying for ten years to get Social Security to understand that if I COULD work, I WOULD work, but due to a lot of psychological problems that cropped up starting around twelve years ago, I can't.  It was hard enough for me to even ask for help and admit that I wasn't capable of working anymore, because I've had a job of one sort or another since I was seven years old.  To hit my early thirties and suddenly become, to MY eyes, useless, was devastating to me, and even worse when I couldn't get anyone other than my psychiatrists and my therapist (and my former, late boss) to believe me.  My husband was a rock, of course, and my family stood by me, too.  However, the government did not.  I went through their process without legal aid and tried my best to explain rationally what had happened to me.  Obviously, I was a bit TOO rational, because they concluded that, although I was clearly too impaired to do the job I had, I could find another one that would better suit my adjusted abilities.  Um, no.  All that happened was I got worse and worse and beat myself up all the more for having failed, and started questioning my own judgment.  I got angry with myself for not being able to "shake it off" or "let it go," as so MANY people told me I should.  I withdrew from society more all the time and lost almost all joy in life as my ability to read and write quickly and well began to slip away.  I lost my focus on everything.  Even now, I forget things that happened a day or two ago, and I have very little sense of time.  It's almost like a peek into dementia:  I still have memories of my childhood that feel like yesterday, but ask me about a film I watched last week, and it's not even there.  Not a frame.  This kind of life is a bit of a comedown for someone for whom everything came so EASILY.  I never had to study.  I never had to be shown how to do something more than once.  I did not make mistakes.  I guess it would've been easier on me if I had forgotten how well my mind USED to work, but I didn't.  I knew everything I'd lost, everything I'd taken for granted that was now gone.  I didn't know what I was going to do, because with my husband on disability already, money was flying out WAY faster than it came in, no matter what expenses we cut.

And now, I caught a break.  My mind hasn't quite accepted it yet.  It's been, oh, around two years now of waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall on my head, and I guess a couple of days of it no longer being there isn't enough for me to believe that my day-to-day life isn't filled with impending doom.  I can't relax yet.  Something in my head has been changed by many (more than just the last two, which have been the worst) years of constant stress and anxiety, and I suppose it's stupid to think it'll go away overnight.

And this will sound REALLY idiotic, and most of you will think I'm full of crap, but at night, which is when most of my nattering nabobs (swiped from a lovely person over on insomnialand.com) come out to torture me, I can snuggle into my pillow, listen to soothing sounds, and for real, for HOURS, sleep.  Now I need to work on my WAKING hours.

Going to sleep now.  Best of health to you and your families,

InsomniAmy