You Just Can’t Sleep

It’s 1:30pm and so far you’ve spent the whole day feeling tired and drained. Your whole being craves the cosy comfort of your bed and the quiet oblivion of sleep, but you’re an adult, it’s only Tuesday and you’re stuck in the office until 5:30pm.

It’s later in the day, you’ve just got home from work and you’re even more tired, but you know that you’ve got things to do before you can settle in for the night. You take off your work clothes and put on a pair of shorts and an old baggy t-shirt, you exercise for 30 minutes. Once you’ve finished your set you shower, change into your pyjamas, re-heat and eat one of the meals you prepared for yourself over the weekend and go about your daily chores.

It gets dark out, it’s finally time for bed, you’ve been thinking about this moment all day, you go to loo, brush your teeth and walk back into your room. Your bed is in front of you, it looks cosy, and you are so very tired, you climb in, turn off the bedside lamp and snuggle down… BUT… you can’t switch off, your brain just won’t stop thinking, it’s not even thinking about anything important, and, to make matters worse, no matter how hard you try you just can’t get comfortable, every position you lie in causes a different part of your body to hurt.

An hour passes and you’re still awake, you’re tossing and turning, but you still can’t find a comfortable position. You try and distract yourself, you tell yourself silly little stories, you even try counting sheep but nothing is working, you’re uncomfortable and your brain is still whiring away to itself.

More time passes and you’re still awake, you finally have to admit that you just can’t sleep. You know tomorrow is going to be shit.

Sometimes All I Want To Do Is Sleep

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve had fairly regular periods of Insomnia, when I get a bout I feel constantly tired, incapable of concentrating for even short amounts of time and just generally low and negative. That said I’m fairly lucky with it because it only happens once every few months and only tends to last for 4 or 5 days at a time. I’ve known people who have suffered for months and even years at a time, to the point where it’s almost completely controlled their lives. It’s hard to explain to someone, who doesn’t get insomnia on a regular basis, just how bad not being able to sleep properly can and does effect your ability to function.

Sleepless

Midnight is swiftly approaching on yet another day and once again I find myself suffering from a lack of sleep. As I sit here on my bed, wrapped in my duvet, nursing a mug of hot tea and munching on a slightly over ripe apple, I find myself drawn, increasingly, into the mood of the music I am listening to. It is my experience that listening to something slow, melodic and a little doomy has a calming effect on my mind and as such is often a viable precursor to sleep, I’m currently listening to a selection of the slower Acid Bath tracks, however, far from calming my mind it has led me down into state of apathy and a mild melancholy… I fear I may be in for a long night.