Sleepless Nights

I have a serious problem with sleep. Perhaps you could say I am a chronic insomniac. This is a problem I've had for as long as I can remember. This means you may be reading from me here all hours of the night.

Many nights I will go to bed, feeling tired as if I could easily fall asleep. Once reaching the bed, I'll close my eyes, try to breath with rhythm so as to become relaxed. Then as if I have no control over it, my thoughts begin racing about and I feel as though I can't lay there a minute longer and the urge to get out of bed and do something else is almost too much to ignore. I force myself to lie there but my mind just keeps thinking, quickly moving from one thought to another. My eyes pop open and wander around the room, trying to focus on what there is to see amidst darkness. Through the window the street light outside beams a dim light across the room. I lay there making out the figures of objects in my room and wonder why my eyes are open when I feel so tired.

I'll strain trying to hold my eye lids shut. My mind just keeps going over the days events, then skips back to yesterdays and from there something that happened leaps my memory into action concerning something else. I turn from one side to the other, beginning to feel as if I could scream. Sort of like it is when you have a sound driving you mad, like a drippy faucet. You just have to finally get up and tend to it before you rip the thing right out of the sink. It is that kind of feeling with nothing to yank out other than wanting to pull out a hammer and bonk yourself on the head to make you go to sleep

You lay there interrupting your constant thoughts with repetitive words such as "I have to get some sleep". I then try to count, I've even tried to focus on just one thought and go over that one thing again and again hoping to bore myself to sleep. Sometimes it works and I drift off to sleep. Other times it is fruitless. There are times that the things I try to do repetitively in my mind bring laughter. I'll say nursery rhymes thinking I'd get bored but I end up not being able to remember one and then my thoughts get active at trying to remember. Then I begin to giggle at myself.

Turning on the television seems to work for some people in providing a steady noise which makes it easier for them to fall asleep. For me it just provides something to become interested in and give me an excuse to not go to sleep. I just have to continue the struggle with silence in the room and laying there and battling the long night's fight for sleep. Sometimes the sun is peaking through the windows before I manage to wonder off in restful sleep. Hopefully it is a day where I can remain in bed way into the morning...