Microfamous

The insomniac says what?
I've had cycles of sleeplessness on and off as far back as I can remember. As a teenager, I ran the streets at night like the daughter of Chaos, sneaking back in through a window an hour before dawn to power nap before school. As an adult, I tried every remedy imaginable, prescribed and otherwise. No Sleepytime tea for this nocturnal girl.

The day has eyes, the night has ears. -Scottish proverb

It's hard for me not to imagine the millions of sound sleepers out there in the world, dreaming and snoring away, when I'm wide-eyed and restless at two, three, four a.m. I wonder if they're dreaming about me? Me with TV on, TV off. Light on, light off. Me getting up to get water. Me, an hour later, getting up again to pee. Me, dozing off as the sun comes up.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after a committee of sleep has worked on it. -John Steinbeck

I've had my share of the Sleep Deprivation Crazies. I cry easily if I miss a whole night of sleep. I drop things. I make mistakes, like addressing letters to my own address or forgetting my keys. The longest I've gone at one stretch without sleeping (or drugs) was 60 hours. Towards the end, I was hallucinating and talking to the visions. I don't let it go longer than one night now; I take a pill on the second night to knock myself out.

I’m for whatever gets you through the night. -Frank Sinatra

I stopped being so hard on myself for something that is the equivalent of faulty wiring a long time ago. I do what I have to do to make sure I get through the cycle with enough sleep to keep me from going batshit crazy, and if I wait it out long enough, it does come back eventually. And instead of fighting it so hard, I've learned that some of my most important thoughts happen in the dead of night. Knocked out cold, I wouldn't have had them.

If I could snap my fingers and rid myself of insomnia, I would. I'm sure I'd discover amazing new things with my wide awake eyes during the day, but there's a wild, creative delight I would miss about being awake at night.

I often think the night is more alive and richly colored than the day. -Vincent Van Gogh

At 3am, I sometimes imagine that I'm the only person in the world.