Wonderful. One night with 4 hours of sleep. Last night - batting zero. Granted, alcohol earlier in the evening - along with serbian coffee- really doesn't HELP promote sleep, but by the time my evening was over I was tired and ready to go to bed.

Well, my body was. My mind apparently has something against the idea of sleep.

This folks, is the joy of insomnia. Insomnia and I are becoming fast friends, especially this weekend. We've been friends since I had to get up at stupidly early hours on weekends back in high school to work at a donut shop.
Besides being the bane of my existence, that job proved to me that A. I am NOT a morning person and B. I don't care how pretty peopl say sunrises are, it's hard to appreciate the beauty when your eyes are red and wanting to shut.

Stress is most definitely the cause of my current affliction - and I thought I was handling stress farily well recently. Of course, i must have been wrong because I'M NOT SLEEPING. And now the stress of not sleeping is making me even more stressed.

So, at the moment, unless I fall dead asleep operating machinery, I'm going on full deprivation to try and get myself exhausted enough to just fucking crash.

It's nearly 7 am, a time of day that, should I have insomnia, my body finally likes to give in and go to sleep. This is always convienient and fun during school because that's usually the time of day I'd be WAKING UP.

Granted, I have a long holiday weekend and no solid job that demands my awakeness at such hours, but it's really messing with my mood and health, and I can virtually guarantee that I will be very dysfunctional soon.

Don't think I haven't tried to avert my insomnia, but the traditional milk/chamomile tea kinda stuff tends to not work all that well when you can't get your brain to shut the fuck off.

Valerian root seems to help...but only when I've been taking it for a little bit and that's hard to do at 5am when you're already tired.

I would love nothing better than to be left alone and let sleep for 13 hours straight. The worst part about being awake is being conscious. There is no mental rest. You can't escape from the strife of the day.

I really don't feel like thinking right now, but since I can't fall asleep, laying there trying for another two hours seems a waste of time.

yes, I have tried and am able to medititate and do relaxation exercises - I'm just really sucking at them.

I have never been able to figure out how to get my brain to shut off when in a state like this - especially when nothing in particular seems to have set me off.

I have general life stress, which is nothing unusual at the moment. No pertinent events that are overly stressful are coming up. Which is why I'm that much more annoyed. I don't even have a good reason to still be awake and suffering.

Worst of all of this, is having a partner who can sleep at the drop of a hat. I've always been a light sleeper - which doesn't help. If i'm not in a comfortable position, with little or no movement around me, not having to run to the bathroom, with the right amount of white noise, it could take me an hour to fall asleep. The more stressed I am, it gets worse. there have been times when I have dropped right off, but on the whole it usually takes me about a half hour - that's an average.

I don't see the point in taking sleep aids- I don't want to be dependent on drugs to help me sleep, especially when i know that bad episodes like this don't happen THAT often...or maybe they do....

I'm sure I could make a doctor's appointment and mention my troubles, but it's not like I don't already know what's wrong with me and why. What more can a doctor do but prescribe something that's only going to make a difference if I actually have bad insomnia after I visit? And, with my track record of getting an illness and then making a doctor's appointment - as soon as I do that, the illness goes away.

So, yes, I am rather angry at the moment. My body is fucking exhausted. The annoying thing is that even though I know that, that during my nightly wanderings it DOESN'T FEEL TIRED. I'm starting to feel it now. Isn't that nice.

We're tired. put us to bed.
Yeah well, I'd love to, but you see I have this problem of
NOT BEING ABLE TO.

I love sleeping. It's one of my favorite things and as much as I love eating I sacrifice food before sleep when in a bind. Food gets pooped out. Dreams are fun and interesting and a wonderful escape from conscious life.

So, being that I'm tired and can't sleep, I have to now compensate for this somehow. That means I have to eat more. Great.

And in the meantime, I'm going to be super bitchy once the tiredness really hits.

Another bad thing about insomnia is the passage of time. it just goes on and on, dragging even though you may stare at the clock and see the hours flipping by. Then it all just becomes a big blur.

The best way I can describe this feeling is like being in prison - now, i've never been in prison, but the feeling of constriction and entrapment is what I'm trying to communicate here. There is no immediate escape from my surrounding, no sense of peace, no rest. Just watching the rest of the world have what I can't.

Loneliness is also a big part of insomnia. I know there's lots of other people out there with this problem - far more than there should be - but when you are STILL awake at 3am when you went to bed at 10, you really wish that in your misery there was someone who could help or understand what you are going through. But there isn't, because everyone else is - you guessed it - blissfully asleep.

unless you're a gamer.
Kudos to you gamers who willing embrace not sleeping, but I could never consciously chose such a lifestyle. it would result in much carnage.

So yes...the world is fast asleep, and you're somewhere on the border of a crying fit- hoping that maybe just bawling your eyes out in frustration would exhaust you enough to put you to sleep. Sometimes, it does.

Here's a good way to sum up my feeling about insomnia.
I am not a patient person by nature.
yet, in not being able to sleep I am forced to do the worst kind of waiting - waiting for myself to shut down.
Perhaps this is my punishment for not being patient sometimes - I wonder.

But that's the worst part, truly. Waiting to go to sleep, and having no idea when it's going to come, and for how long, and if you;re going to be able to achieve it again once you do get there.

Hurry up and wait.
Wait for the clock to change. Wait for the sun to rise. Wait a couple more hours, maybe then you'll be tired. Wait till after work, then you can crash. Wait til the milk or valerian root kicks in.

The reason I'm so impatient a lot of times, is that I'm so often forces to wait for things that are rather vital to my well being - like sleep.