use the needle of your compass to sew up your broken heart

   Today, whilst waiting in the office of a new psychiatrist I planned to see due to my previous ones failing, my primary care doctor's nurse called me with the results of the sleepy study I had taken. She informed me that it took me an hour to fall asleep, and within the total 8 hours I was in bed, I slept a total of 3 hours, which I had personally read already and stated in my previous post. At one point during a 48-minute period I awoke 20 times. I stopped breathing 3 times that night for an average of 17 seconds. My sleep quality was 28%. And I have now been officially diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. Chances are, I'm going to have to now carry around a CPAP machine for the rest of my life.
     The fact that I have sleep apnea is a total surprise, and I feel so absolutely hurt. Hurt because for the past several years the people around me always convinced me that being so tired was my fault - that I wasn't going to bed on time or that I was not exercising enough or that I couldn't hold a sleep schedule and stick to it. I had been told by countless doctors and therapists that my fatigue and daytime sleepiness was due to my depression, and believing that sleeping encouraged my depression and was ultimately one of the causes, my mother religiously kept me awake by going so far as to purposely set off the fire alarm in my room in order to discourage me from accidentally falling asleep. When she sent me to live with my aunt after my depression reached rock bottom four years ago, she, too, refused to allow me rest, and refused to allow me to sleep until 9 at night or wake up later than 5 in the morning. My teachers hated when I slept during class, and so did I because I felt I was personally offending them, but they too believed it was my fault alone and that I was the typical teenager staying up so late. When I fell asleep after school I was met with disapproving looks from my step father who chastised me with little comments to make sure I knew. And I couldn't help it. I tried so hard to fix this about myself because it was so abnormal and wrong and I was so convinced that I just wasn't being strong enough. And I'm confused, because I know that now it was never my fault, and yet I still feel horribly saddened thinking about it. I felt so guilty for over seven years about something I couldn't control. And now I face the possibility of forever spending my nights hooked up to a CPAP, and all I can think about is how you never read love stories where the man wakes up in the morning expecting a beautiful day and a beautiful girl with cute bedhead and still sleeping, then turns and looks to see her wearing a giant mask around her face. I have never been a romantic or fantasizing girl when it comes to love, but knowing that never being able to fall asleep next to someone or just cuddle without being connected to a CPAP destroys me. The machine itself will forever be a reminder of how dysfunctional I truly am. At the end of the day, I am a freak. A literal freak. There are things about me that are, by definition, wrong. And people can sit there all day and preach that if people can't accept those quirks about me they aren't even worth my time. But if we're being honest, really honest, that's not true. Because I know that everyone has certain stigmas against people - not because they are a bad person, but because that's how they've been sculpted by either society or their parents. Even my mother does it when she sees an overweight person. Without knowing his or her circumstances, whether his or her weight is due to a genuine medical condition or not, she is immediately disgusted. Do I think she is a bad person? No. I think she's accustomed to how the majority of overweight people are at fault of their own and that, as humans, we immediately relate qualities, such as being fat, to past knowledge or experiences. Just like how when we touch fire and get burned, we know that when we see something that is similar, such as feeling the steam coming off of a hot plate, we associate it with the fire and choose not to touch it. It's our nature. And it's barbaric. But it's the truth. And now I will be a victim of it.