Insomnia

The stars have to align, just right, for me to sleep. My daughter can sleep no matter what. She most certainly didn’t get those genes from me.

I guess it all started when I was a teenager.

I’ve never been much of a morning person. I’ve always liked to stay up late, then sleep late the next day. In the words of my sistah-in-law, I’m a night person living in a day person’s world.

It sucks.

My mom didn’t like to allow naps during the day. So even though I couldn’t sleep at night I wasn’t able to try to make up for it the day after. Every few days I would end up crashing once I got home from school and sleep until the next morning.

I remember being able to sleep when I was first married. Maybe. It could have been before I got married, but was living with my now husband. A lot of those years kind of run together.

I never was able to just fall asleep. Not right away. It always took me a while to fall asleep, but I was always able to get at least 6 hours a night. Something like that. I could at least function the next day.

To this day, it grates on my nerves when I hear the first, low snores out of my husband about 2 minutes after his head hits the pillow. I want try waking him up, just to ask if he’s really asleep that fast and just because I’m jealous he can fall asleep (Is that mean?). It’s not fair. Ohhhh, the injustice of it all!! And please know, I’m not exaggerating here. If he doesn’t fall asleep within about 10 minutes (extremely rare), he’s tossing and turning. Huffing and puffing because he just can’t fall asleep. Then about 5 minutes later *POOF!!* He’s asleep.

I’m left laying there for hours. Listening to the sweet sounds of his easy slumber.

I worked nights for about 10 years. I can tell you that didn’t help me at all. There are many in my family who are night owls, rather than early birds, so I am inclined to think this runs in the family. Maybe not.

No amount of medication or meditation seems to help me. Every once in a while I can get myself back on what society deems a normal sleep schedule. It usually lasts about 5 days. Tops.

You can bet, no matter how tired I am, no matter how many hours I’ve been awake in the last day or two, that if I have something important to do the next day, like an appointment or a trip out of town, there will be exactly zero sleep for me the night before.

This makes for a lot of days of just trying to get through.

Anxieties over real things and things that are only perceived to be real keep me up. Over and over.

I long for those days where I could sleep at night. Oh, how I long for them.

I don’t have a picture of me sleeping (you can thank me later), so here are a couple pretty pictures to look at.

This post is for Day 2 of BlogFEST 2012, hosted by Susan at Today’s Working Woman. Come on over and join us!