day 2.5

(this upsets me, and since I can't rant on my usual forums, you guys get to suffer through my whining.)
Lets talk about insomnia.
Actually, let's talk about the media's affect on insomnia.
To begin with, insomnia is simply classified as an inability to sleep, or a chronic inability to sleep.
Not sounding too bad yet, are we?
I suffer from chronic caffeine-induced insomnia. Basically, every so often, I screw up the timing and drink a can of coke before bed.
sometimes nothing happens at all. other times, I have a bad night. or a week of bad nights.
Did you know that caffeine causes the same symptoms as anxiety? Aside from the obvious jitters, these symptoms can include delusions and paranoia. Sleep deprivation adds to the mix, with subtle hallucinations, and more paranoia. Add it all up to get a very twitchy person who sees things.

Normally, when I can't sleep, I watch TV. The human voices cut through everything else, and brings back the real world.
Tonight, I couldn't watch TV. There weren't any human voices to separate half-dreams from reality.
I haven't had a night this bad since before we put a TV in my room. I started reading. I read all three books I'd bought this weekend, over 700 pages of literature.
I was waiting.
Before the TV, there was music.
I've always had music playing when I sleep. Ever since I was little. The voices in the music, when it wasn't instrumental, weren't normal voices, to cut through the paranoia and waking nightmares. Even so, they provided some small comfort. Enough to sleep, most nights.
When the music fails to help, and the TV isn't available, I wait. I read, and occasionally close the book, and close my eyes, and doze for a few minutes before the paranoia comes back, and I have to start reading again.
Dawn comes.
Dawn always comes, and once the light is there, to push the shadows back, I can sleep. Even with my slow metabolism, eight hours is usually enough time for the caffeine to leave my system.
And now the light is here. It's funny. On nights like these, it always comes at 7.
Time to sleep.