Insomnia

I slept through my alarm this morning. This is highly unusual behavior for me, the World’s Lightest Sleeper Ever, who wakes up if a mouse farts. But I’ve felt like death warmed over all week, and at two in the morning when I finally decided to drudge up my fan from the basement in the hopes that the cool breeze and soothing noise would lull me to sleep, I didn’t think to make sure my alarm could be heard over it. Whoops.

I haven’t been able to fall asleep before two in the morning since Saturday night, when I got to bed around that time after my concert. The problem with me and my sleep cycle is that I’m a night owl by nature, so while it takes a full month to coerce myself into normal sleeping patterns, all it takes is one late night to ruin it all. The real problem, though, is that despite grazing walls and nodding off in front of my computer all day, at 10:00pm I’m wide awake. My body is so stupid, it treats my hazy days as actual sleep. I must be a vampire.

Insomnia is a problem I deal with off and on. Once I went to my doctor to get some medical advice, hoping she’d have some scientifically-tested methods to help me fall asleep.

Me: Give me drugs.
Doctor: Excuse me?
Me: I want drugs. Preferably a horse tranquillizer.
Doctor: I can’t give you a horse tranquillizer.
Me: Do you have to be a vet to prescribe that?
Doctor: Well, you have to be a horse.
Me: Oh.

Doctors are so useless.

Last night, when my clock announced that it was 12:30 and I was still wide awake and ready to party, I thought, “Oh, @#%k it!” and got up to do my Italian homework. Then I wrote a little, rearranged some furniture, read boring statistics textbooks, composed a symphony, and ate some cheese. Still wide awake. Whoever advised you should get up if you can’t fall asleep right away was on crack. The only thing that getting up serves to do for me is to signal to my body that it’s daytime. I should move to Australia.

Today I’m so exhausted I’m to the point of tears. I drag myself up the stairs to my office, and I think, “Hmmm…carpeted. This would make an excellent napping place.” It’s a good thing sleep deprivation never impacts my job performance. I only need two firing brain cells to work here, anyway.