To be fair, I have something of an excuse for being tired all the time: insomnia paired with still recovering from mono. You're always recovering from mono. It's a suckfest.

Being tired really only kicks in during waking hours. Nighttime is no problem. I am double-shot-of-espresso awake at 2am, but 2pm finds me snoozing while playing videogames. Why is this? Great question. My essays thank me but my morning classes do not.

The best part about being tired all the time is the built-in excuse. "Sorry, I was so tired I forgot." "Sorry I snapped at you, I'm just super tired." It's a bit of a cop-out, but sometimes it's too accurate to pass up.

There's something of a community in the tired people: give me your poor, your weary, your huddled hearts yearning to sleep well! We go on message boards and talk about how to sleep better, compare hours spent awake like battle statistics. We are the people who go for late-night walks for reasons other than creative genus: we are mere humans, plagued by an inability to find a basic pleasure -- to sleep, perchance to dream.

Most effects of hyperexhaustion are negative, though. I don't enjoy dragging myself from place to place, yawning enormously, shaking myself awake with caffeine that keeps me jittery late at night, even more unable to sleep, pacing back and forth to shake off coffee-coated anxiety plus the annoyance of it is 4am why am I still awake.

Sitting still is a herculean task. I am either bogged down by the thudding of blood in my ears telling me that sitting still is not what I need to do, I need to run, walk, write, do something productive -- or I will fall asleep within moments. Movies are a particular weak spots: put me in a dark room with food and flashing lights, and I'm out like the last round of a WWE fight.

Everything feels like a badly constructed dream: some part of me knows this isn't the way things are supposed to go, but I don't quite have the volition to change them.

People are great at offering unhelpful suggestions: they run the gamut from sleep therapy (which sounds terrifying - how can anyone sleep normally with lab tests hooked up to you?) to all-natural menthol oils that stimulate melatonin and calm brain activity. If that worked, I'd be swimming in them. Unfortunately, no dice so far.

Perhaps there will be a cure for sleepless nights someday, but for now, I will concede to dark circles and shaky hands. Sleeplessness scrawls its signature on the planes of my face, but it is still my own. I am here to reclaim my tired mind, much like every other sleepless person I know. We are everywhere. We are common. We only want one simple thing: a good night's sleep.