I’ve fallen a bit behind on my blog post buffer. I’ve regained some ground thanks to a bit of a herculean effort on my part, but I’m still writing posts only a few days ahead of posting them right now and I’m not sure when I’m going to be able to start gaining enough ground to stay ahead. The problem isn’t a lack of post ideas or time to write but a lack of adequate rest. I have plenty of ideas, I just don’t have the energy, focus, or mental fortitude to write more than one blog post in a day and sometimes struggle to even do one. Best I’ve managed was two on last Friday and I barely managed that. Turns out that two weeks of terrible sleep following months of uneven sleep will really wear you down. I wrote about it a little bit for a post that went up last week, but things haven’t improved as much as I’d like in the two weeks I’ve been sleeping on my new mattress. I’m reasonably certain (intellectually, anyway) that this is just the pain of adjusting to a new, good mattress after years on a bad mattress that was starting to cause back problems, all slowed down because a medication I’m taking has negatively impact the ability for my muscles to rest, recover, and strengthen themselves. I’ve done enough research and figured a few things out (given that this experience is similar to ones I’ve had sleeping on other mattresses in the past) to know what is probably going on. Emotionally, though, I can’t really grasp that likelihood. I’m so exhausted from interrupted and poor sleep over these past two weeks that it’s all I can do to keep myself functioning at all. I almost had a minor breakdown over the weekend because of how tired I was due to how little I’d slept and how the various interruptions in my weekend meant that I couldn’t take a nap to make up for any lost sleep. It’s difficult to emotionally process things and to keep my emotions in check so I can handle them in a healthy and constructive matter when I’m this tired, but I’ve managed to hold on by a ragged finger this long and I THINK things are finally hitting a point where they’re starting to improve.

This isn’t the worst situation I’ve dealt with, sleep-wise. It definitely beats out my three month period of bad insomnia in early 2021, but not by as much as I’d like. Sure, I did eventually get some sleep those nights, but it was never enough and I struggled to fall asleep, sometimes for hours at a time. The worst no-sleep situation I’ve been in, though, was after a traumatic event when I was thirteen. I just stopped sleeping until my body would collapse in exhaustion, which I managed to careful timed out so it would happen at night when I was supposed to be sleeping anyway. I don’t remember much of that period of my life, though, partially due to the insomnia that carried on for a while (I don’t remember exactly when it stopped, but my first memories of sleeping normally again where in the late fall of my fifteenth year) and partially due to the trauma. All I’ve got from that period is scattered crystalline memories, vague impressions, and the knowledge that this horrible time in my life eventually passed. Neither of these events is much help in handling my current situation now since I have zero issues falling asleep. I just can’t stay asleep for more than four to six hours since my back hurts so much that I wake up and can’t fall back asleep. It’s thankfully all muscle pain, which means my recent investment in a foam roller and pushing myself to get back into my exercises and stretches is helping, but it still sucks since I can’t use a foam roller or do a bunch of stretches without waking up enough that I can’t really fall asleep again.

As I mentioned, I’ve been doing a bunch of research into new mattresses, mattress adjustment periods, memory foam wear-in, and back problems resulting from one’s mattress. Turns out that you can wind up with a lot of muscle issues (and actual spine/nerve/bone issues) if you sleep on the sort of mattress I was, since your muscles adapt to supporting whatever horrible back orientation you’ve inflicted on yourself. Suddenly moving from a horrible spine curvature to a good one can be incredibly painful to a whole lot of your muscles, not just your back, but it tends to fade in a number of weeks. A lot of people discussing this tend to cite a two-week period as how long it takes them to adjust or to know if their mattress is a good fit or not, but most manufacturers and suppliers require a thirty-day test period before they’ll let you exchange or return your mattress. As someone in the middle of the thirty-day test period and for whom the two-week adjustment period absolutely doesn’t apply, it’s worth noting that a lot of this stuff can vary pretty widely depending on your individual case! If your back muscles are messed up from months of specific and repetitive exercise with a back that’s already messed up thanks to sleeping on a saucer-shaped mattress, it can take a while longer to adjust. It can also take longer if you’re on a medication that triples the time it takes for your muscles to recover from exertion. If you’ve got both going on, well, count your blessings that you’re seeing incremental improvements at all.

It’s difficult to stay focused on those small improvements, though, tired as I am. It is much easier to intellectually grasp that the actual spine pain has ended than it is to emotionally grasp that this new pain between my shoulder blades is temporary as my body rebuilds its muscle alignment and strength from the base upward. I know that the lack of pain in my hips, lower back, and neck is a sign that this is an improvement when I wake up at seven in the morning on the weekend after barely even four hours of sleep, but it is difficult to focus on that thought as I’m tossing and turning in vain hope of finding a position that relieves the pain I’m feeling so I can go back to sleep. It’s a difficult path to patiently walk in the best of circumstances and barely tolerable when I’m going into it after four months of increasingly poor sleep due to joint and then back pain. Especially when I don’t actually know that this will eventually pass. I might actually have the wrong mattress for my needs! I might need to actually exchange it at some point, despite two sales people (one on the day of sale and one this weekend when I, desperate for relief or some kind of hope, went into the store to inquire about the mattress exchange process, tips for this adjustment period, and some reassurance that the mattress I’d tested in the showroom was actually what was delivered to me) assuring me that the firmness I’d gotten was perfect for my needs and what I wanted. I’d like to avoid all that hassle and a SECOND adjustment period if at all possible.

I really like this mattress at all times except when I’m waking up still exhausted because my back hurts too much to sleep any longer. It’s super comfortable, cool when I fall asleep (though it’s often extra warm when I wake up because that’s just how memory foam is, but I’m not really one to wake up due to heat, only to struggle to fall asleep because of it), and provides great support to my back. I haven’t felt the bone-grinding deep pain of a badly aligned back in almost two weeks now and that’s a summer record. I just really want to get a good night’s sleep and I’m so worried about how long that might take that I’m struggling to not freak myself out. Everything gets so much more difficult when you’re not sleeping well and my old comfort of “eventually, you’ll get so tired that you’ll fall asleep no matter what” doesn’t really work here since I’ve hit that point already and gotten no benefit from it. Turns out being so exhausted you can fall asleep mid-conversation doesn’t help you stay asleep when you’re in pain. Your body is super good at waking up because of pain, actually. Part of that whole “survival” thing. Since I know this is just muscle pain and not some kind of actual back issue, I really wish I could just turn it off for a night. I’d be able to get some sleep, turn it back on, and then whimper my way through some stretches and the great/horrible feeling of foam-roller-ing my back. I don’t feel like that’s asking for too much, you know? Just one night.