Insomnia

The last week, I've had incredibly bad insomnia. There have been days where I've had to be at work for 7 am, and found myself staring at the clock at 5 am, having not slept at all, wondering what the hell I was going to do.

When I do sleep, it's in bursts, and filled with weird, incomplete dreams. A few days ago, I dreamt I was lying in my bed, trying to sleep. And when I woke up, I wasn't sure what part was the dream, because I was so damned confused I couldn't make heads or tails of reality itself.

Such is the life of a chronic insomniac, I suppose. Your dreams consist of being awake, and while you're awake, you dream of nothing but a good night's sleep. There's a song title somewhere in that.

Flash forward to last night. I was groggy, and ready to lie down. I had tuesday off, and was planning on spending it being productive as well as starting to clean up the apartment (ha!). I went to bed for a "quick nap" at around 9 pm, and set my alarm for 1 am, for some reason, so that I could get a little bit of "pre-cleaning" done.

I woke up at 1 am, as planned. And then decided that this was stupid, because it was the first time I'd had more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep, and I needed the sleep more than the "pre-cleaning". This was probably the smartest, most coherent thing I've done all week. Which is sad in its own way. So I went back to bed.

And slept for the rest of the night. It was heavenly. If that is at all what being dead is like, I don't know what everyone's complaining about. I could go for some more of it.

It all ended at 7 am, however. Because my cell phone alarm went off. I hit it, and went back to sleep.

It went off again at 8 am. So I hit the button, and threw it across the room. Only for it to go off again at 9 am, waking me up yet again. Finally, I rolled out of bed, turned off that alarm, and realized that somewhere during the night, I had actually set half a dozen independant alarms, each set to go off at a different hour.

I have no recollection of doing this. We're talking some serious Fight Club, Tyler Durden stuff here. And if you haven't seen Fight Club, ignore that reference, it means nothing. And please, go see Fight Club, you fool!

That isn't even the most impressive insomniac thing I've done this month, however. A few weeks ago, I had to be at work for a 3 am shift, and had only had an hour of sleep before waking up at around 2 to walk to work. Somewhere on the gorge, I actually fell asleep while walking.

And woke up a block down the street, wondering where the hell I was, and why was I fullly dressed and walking? And why was I covered in hobo blood?

Okay, I made that last bit up. But the rest of it is absolutely true.

I have to be up at 5 am tomorrow to get to work on time. And I am wide awake right now. I have a feeling tomorrow will be an interesting day.