insomnia

last night....well, I start to say that it was terrible, but that isn't true. I actually had a lovely night. Met up with some friends at the Library of Congress for a concert put on by Shepherd School of Music (Go Houston, Texas!) which was absolutely divine. Piano, violin, and cello, and some absolutely stunning music. One of those experiences where you are left somewhat speechless at the amount of dedication and heart for something that a person can possess, and how that drive is transformed and released into something so beyond...humanity, really. I can't describe it, as I am so often left when it comes to art in it's many forms. It makes me want so much, and yet be somehow content that I can simply be a spectator in a world that can contain it. My life is made so much more..understandable when I witness something like that...which I can't understand.

Now that you tried to muddle through that unintelligible drabble, I'll continue to the annoying part of my evening...

So I got home pretty darn late, us having gone for a drink after the concert and then Alyson and I going for a long walk (I love the Capitol at nighttime!), so when I got home at 12:30, after dropping Alyson at her house, I was ready for bed. I don't do well if I don't get a good 7 hours, and I knew, with my 6:30 alarm set, that today would really be unpleasant if I didn't get to sleep quick.

And then I waited. And waited. Oh....and I waited some more. Yup...it just wasn't going to happen for me.

I find insomnia to be so incredibly frustrating. I struggled with it a lot in my teenage years, going weeks and weeks with no more than 2-3 hours of sleep per night. And, thankfully, I really don't have to deal with it a lot anymore.

Maybe it's so frustrating because it takes me back to a time when I felt very much not in control of my life and the things that were going on around me.

I do genuinely use sleep as a means of escape, or I used to. It was a way that I could block things out, turn off the chaos, and get away. Which is why it was such a struggle when I started being an insomniac.

So now, even though I don't have to deal with those things anymore, and I so rarely have the insomnia surfacing, it scares the crap out of me. Because it makes me feel so unsafe. If I can't control that escape, if I can't make my body help me out....

It's all entirely irrational. But so are hidden memories and triggered responses. We don't always get to pick how we react to things, or what will scare us. Yes, we can try to control, evaluate, push through, and conquer.

But in the darkness of a mid-morning hour, when the days dance with each other for a few fleeting moments until one must leave the other, in that moment of uncertainly of who we are, where we are, what the world is, at that moment....I am a little girl, just wanting to run to my dreams.