Mental Meanderings

Not Sleeping, Again

It's 2AM and I'm not sleeping, again. *frowns* It's been perhaps a month of nights like this, when part of me is so very tired, another part is wide awake, and somewhere within there is a part of me afraid to sleep. I don't know what's causing the insomnia, I don't recall ever suffering it like this before. I've faced sleeplessness on manic highs but never extending like this into other moodsets and regardless of everything I do.

I know a great deal has to do with lax discipline. Sleeping for me is like everything else. It happens when I stop, and sleep. It happens when I decide to put aside everything else, turn off, close my eyes and let the darkness decend.

I also know how important sleep is to keeping my moods stable. I usually stick strictly to my self-imposed midnight curfew but I've been letting myself get away with staying up late. Giving in to the excuses and the fear. Some nights I stay up, and up, and up until eventually I fall asleep completely unaware that I was falling asleep. I pass out unable to remain awake.

I thought coming off caffeine would make me sleep better. It doesn't seem to have accomplished anything and I'm still craving caffeine. I'm getting headaches that are probably the result of my shockingly bad sleep pattern or lack thereof. I can't concentrate which is perhaps another side effect.

How do I come to a point where I can understand what motivates this inner urging not to sleep? What is it pushing me to stay awake, and awake? What drives and fuels this fear? What am I really afraid of?

It's not even that I'm trying to accomplish anything. It's not like when I'm manic high and doing everything at once and wizzing through it all. These nights I'm mostly in zombie mode, existing but not really here at all. More often then not depression decends and I start focusing on aspects of my life that aren't perfect. I notice how many of them there are. Normally I'm very upbeat about life and it's purpose and my reason for being. But in this dark hour, when I'm alone with my thoughts and the eerie light of my TV, book lamp, or monitor I'm left to wander the barren hallways of my mind.

It's times like this I come to realise how alone I am. How cut off from the world I keep myself. I ache for human interaction, a sense of belonging, and being a part of something. My kids are perhaps the deepest connection to a world outside of myself I have. When I think my existence doesn't particularly matter I force myself to consider them and what I mean to their life. It's pretty pathetic that my rocks in life are a beautiful six year old girl and an adorable two year old boy. I cling, because without them I can't imagine existing.

Being alone in the dark with my thoughts is a bad and dangerous place to be. I can't understand why it feels like my mind would rather be here, then in the bliss of sleep. Deep in the realm beyond conscious thought where nothing but calm, peace, and rest exist. Beyond the dream world where I sleep in oblivion and wake refreshed and renewed. Wouldn't giving myself to slumber be better then being awake to the inner demons that haunt my waking dreams?

I escape into books, and movies. Freeing myself from the ghosts within by escaping into fantasy. I've done it all my life. It's perhaps one of the reasons I love to write. I also know that I'm technically a night owl and have only kept sane hours because of my kids. If I had the option I'd be up writing at this hour and sleep all day. Perhaps that's what's going on here, my mind and body are urging me to take the opportunity to use these late hours while I can because in a month my oldest will be back and school and reality will again force me to face the sunlight. I don't think that's it however.

I think there must be something deeper. I scrounge trying to find the root of the issue but it seems to be beyond me. I hide myself well behind this wall and even finding truth within myself is difficult. It's like wandering in a hedge maze full of traps. To wander the weaves, dead ends, wrong turns, and blocks in my mind. What's worse is it's a maze that has no beginning or end, and I just keep running, and running, searching, searching but there isn't an answer and there isn't a way out, it's all just... maze...

*grimaces* OMG stream of consciousness when I'm existing on the fumes of reality is a bit scary. I know in this moment I could probably face myself, confront the inner me in the mirror and acknowledge what is real. But to do so would leave me open, wounded, undefended. I've lived in the cage of my life too long already, I don't yet have the courage to step out of it. So I tell myself again, "not today" and I tell myself, "maybe tomorrow". Tomorrow I'll probably tell myself the same thing.

Who knows if someday will ever come. It is not today.