I caught sight of my eyes in the mirror last Saturday. “Wow,” I thought, “you finally look like how you feel” and moved on. It’s only now, on the following Tuesday, that it wasn’t my pain putting dark circles under my eyes. It wasn’t my depression that seems to hit when no one is around, thus the anxiety attacks that my loneliness triggers that turn into panic attacks. It wasn’t the excruciating anxiety I get at night, that leaves me drinking more beers than I really want, and more vaping than I’d prefer. It wasn’t the night terrors or the restless leg syndrome, either.

It was because I can’t sleep.

Years ago, I had no self esteem. It’s not really any person or thing that put me in that mindset; I just simply didn’t think having one was as important as making it day by day. And it was my lack of self esteem that led to my lack of knowledge on why exactly it was that I can’t sleep. So when people told me it was my fault, I believed them. I believed all of their theories, and even tried them out. Your diet, was a big one. Your habits, was another. When I got better at both, it didn’t seem to matter, because still, I can’t sleep. (I was also sick and fighting it, and also going with others’ advice on how to handle my body over my own intuition.)

I went to Melatonin, which helped for a while. I also did anything over the counter that could knock out a horse, and while some worked for some time, my tolerance would make it impossible to stay on a regimen, leaving me to do math with pills and decide when I should sleep. And still, I can’t sleep.

I tried homeopathic medicine. I wasn’t happy to do it, and I had a lot of qualms and questions about it, but I still went into it open minded. I tried to go organic and fair trade with my food and anything I put on/in my body; I chewed on fucking Valerian root; I took organic, all-natural sleep medicine. I tried essential oils, but that didn’t help and apparently most scents are toxic to cats, so I gave away my collection. It smelled nice? That’s honestly the nicest and last thing I’ll say about homeopathic medicine.

Yoga has been a tool of mine for years, but more as an exercise to stay flexible and agile, rather than for healing. For the first time in years, doing something before bed helped. It didn’t mean my nights weren’t still shitty as a concept, but I was able to actually say out loud, “this helps” and it doesn’t hurt anything else, or give me bad side effects, and is not toxic to cats.

I tried mindfulness as a last resort. If I couldn’t get my body to help me, I thought, maybe I could get my brain to help. Meditation was the first tool I learned on my path to better mindfulness, though I admit to very few occurrences of me being relaxed nearly enough to reach it. Once you can meditate, it’s almost disappointing when you’re not immediately better. It takes consistency, something I wasn’t raised around and find irritating in practice, and it takes control. If you’ve read one (1) blog post of mine, even if it’s just this one, I feel like it should be apparent I’m bad at both.

Mindfulness takes a little longer than meditation. It takes recognizing your toxic thought patterns, and what can trigger those thoughts. The best silver lining thus far was being able to handle those triggers; when you suffer from C-PTSD, you’re more than acquainted with triggers — it feels like you made them up yourself.

Affirmations can help mindfulness, too, but I find that too many of them can be daunting; the lesson was learning which affirmations work for me both mentally and physically, rather than what I think should work. Affirmations should be things you can say, think, or write down, no matter the topic, and not just believe it, but know it.

Did those three things work? Yoga, mindfulness, affirmations, some meditating? Sleep hygiene that I tried and loved and may write about one day? Yes, and no. Until I can have the money to pay for a sleep specialist to find out more, I am currently using a prescription sleep aid. I am also doing all the things above in top of my sleep aid, as medicine can stop working, or I can accidentally take a nap, and have a harder time falling asleep later.

I still have bags under my eyes. I still cry sometimes at night when sleep won’t come, because the chronic pain will get worse if I don’t sleep. However, I have learned to use these tools to help me. Mindfulness and meditating can help me when awake, and the pain ointments and medications will help ease the pain. My affirmations will then come in handy when I feel my night anxiety start to rise. It’s a lot to do, even for a normal person, but I do it because I can’t sleep.