I am a self diagnosed insomniac. I didn't need a doctor to inform me of my condition. I had plenty of spare time to diagnose myself as I lay in my bed wide awake for yet another night. Insomnia is torture. The feeling I hate the most is when I've been in bed, staring into the dark and then suddenly the wardrobe becomes visible as daylight creeps in and I realise I haven't slept a wink for seven hours.
I recall chatting to my mother one day in her kitchen about my sleep deprivation and she thought maybe I wasn't active enough. "Sexually" I replied. She left the kitchen pretending that she could hear her mobile phone ringing in some other room. She does have a point. I don't exercise but that's because I have the best excuses/reasons for not exercising and use them with pride when people tell me that if I tired myself out, I'd probably sleep better at night. I also like to live life to the least, so most activities make me feel like I'm making the most out of my life. A feeling I'm just not comfortable with.
Insomnia is painfuly boring, even though you have all these spare hours. You're too tired to do anything productive with them, so you waste them all by lying in bed weakly willing sleep on. You're afraid to get out of bed and do anything in case sleep does make an appearance and you happened to be looking in the fridge at the time and missed it.
Insomnia is also a lonely way to tiredly spend huge chunks of my life, as most of my loved ones eventually fall asleep. I find the internet comforting during these lonely hours. I spend my nightime internet browsing doing the following three things:
1) Reading about insomnia. Which probably doesn't help ease me into a gentle slumber.
2) Scouring a Porn site to see if I recognise anybody from school. I haven't yet but then again I haven't finished the website and they update it regularly. Which probably doesn't help ease me into a gentle slumber.
3)Checking online obituaries for ex-boyfriends. I haven't found one yet, but the odds are that one day I will, if they don't find my name on it first.
So I decided to take sleeping tablets to put me out of my misery. People lecture me on the dangers of their side effects and addiction. So I lecture them back on the dangers of a sleep deprived Carol Tobin.
And who's to say that my waking hours haven't led to a porn or internet addiction? I can honestly say that I would rather be addicted to sleeping tablets and sleeping, than not addicted to sleeping tablets and not sleeping. I would rather risk suffering the adverse reactions of a sleeper should I have such a reaction to one : drowsiness, headache, dizziness, confusion. These are the same reactions I also get from not sleeping. Insomnia also makes me suffer from mood swings, hatred of most things, inability to make eye contact as I'm aware that my eyes are too red, dehydrated hungover feeling even though I haven't been drinking, inability of ability, hallucinations, escessive yawning, panic attacks, the feeling that rats are running over my feet and the feeling that spiders are forming webs behind my ears.
So I'd rather medicate and be guaranteed dreams, than stay awake and live a nightmare.
(this blog was not sponsered by a drug company, an online obituary website, Youporn or my mother