insomnia jennifer just on the other side of the overfelt's house is kate just on the other side of the chuch at the end of my block is mark and I stand on my front porch somewhere between sleep and sanity the things I wish to hold are not within my reach and the things that are near are slowly driving me mad 010205 ... deb corkscrew slowly winding its way through my skull inch by inch getting closer to my frail mind ready to toss me in a blender and see if i still work 010214 ... chiidi sometimes days on end blood cells screaming at dsl speed through the ultra tight capillaries the exchanges goddamn sometimes i miss being the sick junky fuck down the end of the wall 010215 ... brown cardigan boy you're never really awake and you're never really asleep. everything's a copy of a copy of a copy. 010301 ... arinna on a long enough timeline, everyone's survival rate goes to zero. 010307 ... unhinged i wanted to talk but couldn't think of anything to say. choked and deprived, nothing's really new around here. 010329 ... dean-bean I haven't slept right in two weeks. I think it's beggining to affect my performance. Two weeks. I can't close my eyes, see? Not without thinking. Damn you, hamlet syndrome. 010330 ... green_tenedril once i finally do get some good sleep, i feel terrible the next day. am i going to stay this way forever? it makes life kinda one big day with naps in between. i think my reflection time was always when i would lie down at night just before falling asleep. now i just throwmyself into bed. (why sleep while the world goes on?) 010420 ... Aimee I can't sleep. I really really really want to, but honey, it just ain't happening. I sit up most of the night waiting for sleep to come... yawning, and just laying in bed with my eyes closed, yet nothing happens.... i'll sometimes get an hour here and there, but not often.... 010515 ... ecila at the momnt, its not insomnia, thou that was here eariler this month. at the moment, no matter how long or short i sleep im still just as tired in the morning. so i choose to stay up most of the night, cos it doesnt fucking matter in the end and it shits me. i remember when i could sleep for hours, days, and awake refreshed and all was good. well, not all was good, but at least sleep was wroth it. 020608 ... Sonya This can drive you to insanity. At times I don't even remember things I've said or done. When you get used to having your body exhausted day in and day out you don't even notice when you fail to remember little details of yesterday or bigger events that took place. It's like being stuck in a traffic jam on the bridge of dreams heading to slumberland. 020608 ... alice if you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? 020725 ... lotuseater i havent slept right for weeks... always stoned, always half-asleep, never quite anywhere. wandering in my own mind, paying no attention to anything. i forgot what day it was 030418 ... kuma insomnia is the purgatory between sanity and madness 030911 ... minus make it stop, somebody please 110903 ... minus still 17 years later 170112 ... tender square i used to get so mad at myself when i couldn’t sleep through the night, as if it were a failure on account of my body to perform the simplest of tasks. but a few years ago, i picked up a book on a whim at the crazy wisdom tearoom called “waking up to the dark” and it’s truly altered my perspective. clark strand argues that our reliance on artificial light has made it more difficult for us to sleep; that, in times before electricity, it was not unusual for us to sleep in shifts—a few hours of rest, followed by a couple of hours of being awake, followed again by a few hours of rest. wax and whale oil candles were expensive to use on a consistent basis in the modern era, and many families would retire to bed after the sun had set, unless they were wealthy. because of this, it was not uncommon for our ancestors to go through a rem cycle and then to be woken for a period of time as night wore on. and they would use this window in the midst of darkness’s long hours to pray, to meditate, to read, or to make love. strand has called this phenomenon “the hour of god.” when i was a child, we lived in a house that had a large bay window in our living room. my parents used the window’s ledge to display their tchotchkes, and at dusk we’d close the vertical blinds like stage curtains at the end of a show. it was not a living room we were allowed to use as kids; my parents didn’t want us ruining the emerald velour furniture, or scratching the wood tables. the only time we were ever permitted to be in there was to complete our weekly chores: dusting and vacuuming. sometimes, i would wake from my bunk bed in the middle of the night and creep from the hallway into the living room while the rest of the house was sleeping. i’d go to the window and stick my hand between the slats and, ever so quietly, move some of the fragile statues to make enough space for me. then i’d slip behind the blinds and take my spot, looking out onto our empty street, watching nothing and everything. and i’d stay there for as long as i could, feeling both lonely and accompanied in the silence. after a while, i’d move every fragile thing back to the places i had memorized and return to my bed. it’s a ritual i continued until we moved from that house when i was a teenager. decades later, the insomnia comes and goes. typically, if i’m feeling overwhelmed by obligations, weighed down by interpersonal conflict, or worried about my family members, i can’t sleep. and in those times of distress, i’ve noticed that the anger towards myself returns. sometimes, the anger even gets redirected toward my husband, whose snoring can make it impossible for me to relax, forcing me to leave our shared bed for the couch, where i’ll lay restless for hours. lately i’ve been waking in the twilight and i’ve been welcoming the dark. i’m not as stressed as i’ve been in previous times; my mind has become a sieve that can’t hold all the ideas in. now i play games with the clock to try and guess how much time has passed beneath my sleep mask, to see if my body can intuit the length of an hour. and i’ll lie there listening to my husband snore away like a little baby buzzsaw and i am comforted. when night wants to wrap me in that liminal space between wake and sleep, i let it. 210831 ... nr at least the half_asleep_thoughts that are preventing me from sleep get more confident and pronounced 220823 ... epitome of incomprehensibility For me it's situational rather than chronic - if I'm in a new place, in a building alone, too hot, hungry, etc., I'll have trouble sleeping. 220823 ... e_o_i (not always, but often) 220823 ... nr it's situational for me too, but those situations have about 99% to do with my anxious, worrying, ruminating brain. 220823 ... e_o_i Makes sense. If I'm worrying about something I have to do the next day, or some stressful situation, it's not that I can't sleep at all, but I keep waking up. I think it's normal to wake up at night. It's nothing to worry about, normally. But if I do that more than twice it usually means I'm worrying about something (or tying to sleep in a bumpy bus/train - hello, this past morning). 220824 ... e_o_i OK, tender_square made the same point I just did (re waking at night) - more poetically and with sources. And nr, I hope you can find the peace of mind to sleep better soon! It sucks to be worrying about stuff when you just want to switch your thoughts off. One thing that distracts me and often helps me sleep is the animal_adjective_alphabet game. But it doesn't have to be that specifically. Whatever helps your thoughts follow a pattern could work (not that it would work for everyone just because it's worked for me). 220824 what's it to you? who go blather from