I'm an Insomniac. With a capital "I". I have been throughout periods of my life, but this has been the longest-it's been ongoing since about November 2002. I just can't sleep. When I lay down, I spin around in bed, and all the problems and shit and hassle and stress in my life just builds and builds, and then I know it's pointless to lay there and keep trying to sleep-it ain't going to happen. If I don't even bother going to bed (no one likes to spin around in bed. And no one likes to lay next to someone who spins, so it's a lose-lose deal, really), then I just stay up. Sometimes I don't sleep at all, sometimes I can get two or three hours. I watch TV, I read. I don't write, since I can't write with anyone around me. I have to be alone, or else I feel like they will come up behind me and read over my shoulder, and I'm afraid I'm just too fucking fragile to handle someone editing me.

So I have been prescribed Sleeping Pills. Again with the caps, since these are the real deal-they knock you flat out and make it so that, just before you go to bed, you lost whole portions of your life. I'll wake up in the morning and not remember going to bed at all, nor the events immediately leading up to it. I hate losing parts of me like that. It's so disorganized. I almost never lose things, so losing parts of my consciousness really pisses me off. This is not the Ny-Quil of my teenage years, in Sweden, these pills are the real deal. I often worry I will develop too much of a penchance for them. The Swedish doctors seem less concerned about that than I would have guessed. You can buy natural sleeping tablets here in the Swedish pharmacies (called apotekets), which are made of Valerian. I have tried these, but it's really like eating Skittles, they have that much of an effect (minus the fun fruit flavors, no less).

I try to avoid taking Sleeping Pills. But I really miss sleep, and all that sleep entails. They say you never appreciate what you have until it's gone, and it's so true-I would give anything to just walk upstairs, throw off my clothes, curl up into bed and fall asleep. Naturally and at once. I miss it.

Dreams are not so relaxing-I have (for most of my life) suffered some pretty screwed up nightmares. The kind that wake you up screaming (again, not so pleasant to sleep next to me. More than once I have thought the various guys next to me would have a heart attack, throttle me, or both). Recently, to add to the potluck of fun of being my bedmate, I have taken up sleepwalking. Not the weird, arms in front of you kind. I do strange things-one night I (apparently) went into the kitchen, grabbed canned goods, and stacked them in the windows. Apparently I even managed to stack them in some sort of pattern, in the dark. I don't remember doing these things, but they are faithfully recounted to me the next morning by my Significant Other.

I wish I could dial down the crazy sometimes. Anyday now, Alice will be looking for me, wanting her Looking Glass back. And when she shows up, I'm going to give that bitch a piece of my mind...

And then I'm going to sleep.

-H

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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