So the 7th day is starting.
6am getting close on this the 1 week marker since I slept more than 3 hours in a stretch. When does a mind truly stop working as it should from sleep depravation alone?
Well I don't know but I strongly suspect it is at a place not far away, a few more corners ahead perhaps.
Why?
Sure I have always had periods during which sleep was hard to come by but never like this week. This has been a real test of wheather or not my mind is made of glass and it's still not over it seems. 26h hours ago I woke up from a 3h nap and still there is no way in hell I can sleep. The day before that nothing and stepping even one day more back in time 2½ hours.
To be this tired and still watch the roof of a bedroom in a dark room for 4-5 hours after a 3km walk just before bed is torture in itself but add the mind altering, or rather mind destroying, exhaustion of almost a week without real sleep and you have yourself a poison coctail fit to kill.

I don't wanna give in and go to a doctor that will give me a box of sleeping pills for a few reasons.
1. I don't take pills unless something really terrible will happen if I don't.
2. I don't wanna solve something chemically if there is any other way because of a founded or unfounded fear of that making this worse put in a long time perspective.

Now, it might have to come to that anyway in a few days if I don't snap out of this as I am not willing to put my very mind on the line just to prove a point to myself. It will have to come to a situation in which I know that is actually about to happen before I will give in though. That moment in time is getting close enough by now for me starting to seriously concider it after all.

Again:
Why?
No clue. This week has not been any different from my normal ones really. I am not thinking more or for that matter less than usual. I am not more anxious than I usually am and trying to watch myself and my life objectivelly from the outside-in I am doing better than I have been for quite some time so:
Why indeed.

I feel under attack from life itself and I don't know how to defend myself. I can't fall back and regroup because the battle has already pushed me up against a wall so from here on it's fight or loose and this is a battle I don't wanna loose because I don't think I will come out as the same person in the other end if I do.

6.30am
I don't wanna go to bed again yet. It's not that I am not tired because that I can write a book about by now, the problem is that I am not sleepy. I don't wanna go to bed until I am sleepy again as 4-5 hours yet one more time staring at the celing is too much of a strain on a brain that is not really under control. I can't do that right now, not again after just coming out from such a session a few hours ago.

Writing is good.
I always wrote a lot and looking back in time that has always been the case. I write always, well not literally but as much as I need to and that's a lot.
For you who know me I suppose this is a rare glimpse into what is me at a specific point in time and for you who know me well a tale of just how much something like this can alter the state of someone in such a short period of time.
1 week. ONE week.
That is really all it takes to jump from one side to the other. A week is such a brief period of time normally, just think back yourself. What did you do 7 days ago?
It almost feels like it was yesterday, normally it does but sometimes it's an eternity. A week is nothing. A brief whisper from time itself and yet it can be everything.

Sleep is something taken so for granted that even when I myself read through what I have just written I feel silly making it out to be such a problem when it is not there.
But, depraved of it you start within days to drift away from what is you. Your mind starts playing tricks on you and none of those tricks are pleasant. Add a few extra days and more and more often you don't even realise that you are being played by your own brain.

That is where I am now and I am not really anxious to get to know what the next step is, I am sure it is not a good one.
There is such a thing as monsters, they are just not hiding under beds and in closets. They are wherever you are. Kept at bay in every normal situation but always waiting for a chance to get to work if the defences go down. Our defences are not as strong as we think. All it takes is:

One week.