rememberin' where I been:

it is quarter ‘till four in the morning as I am writing this; I have to be at work no later than eight thirty - about four and a half hours from now. there is no sane reason at all for me to be awake at this hour, much less blogging, but there comes a point in the insomnia experience where you just accept that tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day and it would be best for you to find something to occupy yourself with in the meantime. fortunately for you, gentle readers, that something is a blog for me.

insomnia has been the bane of my existence (or at least in the top five) for almost as long as I can remember. I’ve never been an especially sound sleeper, but sometime around my junior or senior year of high school, things took a decided turn. it became damn near impossible for me to get to sleep before midnight or more likely one a.m. regardless of what time I had to be awake the next morning, which necessitated a lot of sleeping through first period for the remainder of my high school career. since then, I’ve mostly stuck to evening classes and night work out of simple convenience; I can’t sleep until I’m totally exhausted anyway, so I might as well accept the fact that I’m usually going to be up until six in the morning.

but now I have a day job, and some days are infinitely longer than others. I can handle two or three days on a couple hours’ sleep - four at the most - but then I crash, and when I crash, I’m out for twelve or thirteen hours, which means I wake up at noon and can’t sleep that night - rinse, lather, repeat. the only thing that’s ever worked in terms of getting me to go to sleep is running myself absolutely ragged at the gym twice a day and then a handful of Benadryl two hours before I head to bed, and it’s not very often that I actually have time to hit the gym twice a day (once is an achievement lately, but I digress.)

it’s more a mental thing than anything else; my brain insists on thinking about really, really irrelevant things if it gets bored, and I have always been easily bored. and if I actually have something important to think about, like all the apartment stuff I need to do tomorrow (which is now today) and the St. Mary’s paperwork that needs to be done next week and a handful of equally significant Things To Do, well, I end up having nights like this where I get an hour and a half of sleep before midnight and have to make due for the rest of the day. the part I’ve never understood is my brain’s ability to keep me awake in spite of myself. I am exhausted right now; my body is heavy and my eyes hurt and I want sleep like nothing else. but as soon as my head touches the pillow, I am suddenly wide awake. I get up and make a sandwich - back to being exhausted.


and we’re now coming up on four thirty in the morning. I do believe I will make a trip to Wawa and buy the absolute biggest can of Red Bull they have. wish me luck, gentle readers. I expect that I will need it.




(I remember how hard it is out on the block; every time you turn around somebody get shot:)