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Health and Wellness

What It's Really Like Living With Insomnia

Days and even weeks of pulling constant all nighters.

Kayla Cross

Dec 26, 2016

Below The Gnat Line, GA

What It's Really Like Living With Insomnia

Google

As a college student, pulling an all nighter is usually a common thing. Most of my friends drink a few cups of coffee or a couple of shots of Redbull in order to get through the all nighter. For me, that's not really a problem because more likely than not I'll already be awake. If you know me pretty well or really if you know me at all, you'll soon figure out that I suffer from Insomnia.

Insomnia: habitual sleeplessness; inability to sleep.

Sometimes it's just going a few days without sleep or waking up after an hour or two of sleep and staying awake the rest of the night. Sometimes it'll last a couple of weeks. There will be weeks where I might get 8-10 hours of sleep the entire week. It goes back and forth between being an absolute blessing and my own personal hell. While others are struggling to stay awake all night to finish that essay they forgot about, I've been up getting ahead in my classes because I literally have nothing else to do. Seriously, last semester I finished two of my "supposed to be" 16 week online college classs in 7 weeks because there were so many nights where I couldn't sleep. When I'm going through one of these insomnia phases, I have a never ending supply of energy. I'm constantly going. I'm constantly thinking. I have to find ways to channel all of this energy. I try to be productive and get ahead in my classes or write hand written encouragement letters to my camp staff every month, draw, etc. I just try to keep myself busy because if I don't, it can quickly become hell. Let me just say, insomnia and anxiety don't mix very well. When you're always awake, you're always thinking. Sometimes it seems like the overthinking never ends. I'm always worrying myself with the situations in my head that aren't really even situations in real life, they are just thoughts in my head that I've somehow convinced myself are real. This gets tiring really fast. Its tiring to be constantly worrying about things that aren't always necessarily real. It's tiring staying up for days at a time. My body is aching and just wanting to relax and sleep, but my mind is going 200 mph to where I can't sleep. I just lay there awake trying to come up with a new way to channel the never ending energy. It seems to be a never ending cycle.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.

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