It's 3 am. My house is silent and everyone has been asleep for hours. Even the cat doesn't wake when I walk through the room. I am a ghost. Floating about; silent and unseen. Insomnia has affected almost every night of my life for the last decade.
I've tried everything there is to be able to fall asleep. Medicine, reading before bed, working out earlier in the day, yoga, even meditation. So far, nothing has helped me fall asleep.
Insomnia has dominated my nights for as long as I can remember. In high school, I would spend almost every night rearranging furniture and organizing my closet. The first few years were the most difficult. Surviving on very little sleep is doable, but thriving and maintaining a decent quality of life is a whole other issue.
Because of this, I have never been a morning person. It’s not necessarily difficult to wake up because I rarely fall into a deep sleep anyway, but my mood is awful earliest in the mornings. Usually, a couple of hours into my day is when I feel the most productive. My energy picks back up and I can get through the rest of my day.
More often than not, by the time 8:00-9:00 PM rolls around, I am exhausted. Mentally and physically drained. I usually plan my days to try to go to bed at 10 o’clock at night. But it never fails, as soon as I lay down to sleep, my brain starts working. Like a fog clears in my mind and suddenly I can’t keep my thoughts quiet any longer.
My nights usually consist of laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, for at least an hour after everyone else has fallen asleep. Trying to calm the chaos that is my thoughts, is like trying to stop a tornado destroying everything in its path. My insomnia riddled thoughts have no rhyme or reason. I find myself obsessing over something that happened ten years ago, to all of a sudden trying to remember the name of a classic 90's tv show.
My thoughts can be calm or frantic, and it’s almost as if I cannot get through processing one thought without another bombarding my mind. For a while, my doctor tried to prescribe me different sleep aids. I noticed that when I take them, my body feels more tired, but my brain doesn’t seem to be affected.
They do not make me fall asleep any sooner or easier, however, they do make it so that when I finally do go to sleep, I cannot wake up for at least 12 hours. And since I don’t find sleep until close to or after 4 a.m. some days, I would sleep through the entire next day, which in turn makes me stay awake longer the next day.
I have read that creative people find it harder to fall asleep. Unfortunately, this offers me little consolationafter 36 hours of being awake. Over the years, my difficulty falling asleep has affected relationships, jobs, and my health. Leaving a cold spot in the bed, where I should be sleeping, has caused arguments with my husband who doesn't understand why I have to get up in the middle of the night.
My mood after two days with barely any sleep has caused family arguments and sour first impressions. It has also made me feel resentful towards my family who all sleep with no issues. It is hard to explain insomnia to someone who has a healthy sleep schedule. It’s almost as if I’m a vampire, with none of the perks.
Don’t get me wrong, I do feel sleepy. I do feel like I want to pass out from exhaustion most of the time, but my mind is a totally separate entity. I have learned to try to spend my waking hours being as productive as I can. I paint, read, organize closets and pantries, hang ceiling fans, fix leaky pipes, and overindulge in 24-hour drive-thrus.
Most of the time I just think. I create poems in my mind of memories and thoughts that I usually don't ever share. I reflect on past decisions and plan out my future goals. I am a thinker. I put thought into every action I take and every move I make. I used to dread night time.
But as I've grown older and wiser, I look forward to the solitude and the opportunities that the empty silence provides me. People ask me how I can be content spending so much time alone, and I don't really have an answer. My mind is a web of confusing and wonderful thoughts and ideas. And sometimes, there just isn't enough time in the day.
