Four Hours

I'm battling some insomnia. I've mentioned this before. It's been a lifelong affliction. It comes and goes and when it goes, I forget I ever had a problem. But when it returns, I then recall all the eras of my life I just could not get my sorry ass to sleep.

I'm getting about four hours a night. I'm doing my best not to nap, so I'll be tied at night. But then something strange happens to me around 11:30 or so. I get this amazing second wind and I feel like staying up is very, very important. I don't intellectually agree, but a deep-seeded urge to stay up takes over. Then around 2:00 I want to sleep. Sometime around 4:00 I get there, sometimes later.

It's quite literally exhausting.

Over time the things I've discovered that will help me sleep have always changed. Sometimes it was another person in the room for comfort. Then it was being alone to have total silence. The door open. The door closed. Total darkness. A light on from the bathroom. Music playing. A fan blowing. A glass of milk. No fluids for hours before bed. Watching a subtitled movie. Not watching anything.

The formula for falling sleep is as elusive and ever-changing for me as how to stimulate the clitoris is for the average teenage boy.

Bloody hell on a stick.