I've always had trouble sleeping, ever since I could remember, as a primary school kid, a jr high brat and a high school lazy ass. It was normal for me to lay awake for at least an hour before finally succumbing to sleep. I never really talked about it, so I though it was normal for the longest time. Until I found out Larkspur's dad is able to magically fall asleep in three seconds flat. I thought he was different from the norm, that is until Larkspur said everyone in her family is like that. Maybe it's a family thing?
Curious I went to my own family, questioning how long it takes them to fall asleep. Ignoring their strange stares, they replied it took them between five to ten minutes, not the lighting speed of Spurs family, but still much faster then me. It made me wonder why I didn't have this amazing ability to fall asleep within minutes, yet instead I had to lay around in bed for an hour and hope I fall asleep quickly.
I kept my sleeping problem to myself for the longest time. I don't think my parents found out till I was halfway through high school. Still my methods of getting to sleep weren't always the best. When I was little I would read until I was so tired that my eyes couldn't stay open, literally making myself exhausted.
After that I tried going to sleep around 10pm every night, because by my calculations that meant I'd fall asleep sometime past 11. During that hour of staring at the ceiling I devised stories in my heads, some continued for months and they helped me get excited for bed, sometimes even helping me get to sleep faster than the usual time. This method worked for the longest time, but after I moved I stopped these nightly bed time stories, because I kept wishing I was living in them than in the real world. A dangerous thought process for anyone, so I tossed that aside and went back to staring at the ceiling.
After I started Kung Fu I noticed that the nights I had training I fell asleep much faster than usual, so I took to doing light exercises before bed most nights. This allowed my body to feel physically tired and thus shut itself off faster. After more than a year of training I found this method eventually stopped working. Really, now it only works during the summer when I barely train at all. So again my sleep dilemma begins.
This time I turn to meditation. Surprisingly it helps a lot, laying in bed and focusing on my breathing for a few minutes. This seems to help ease my mind into a going to sleep now state and keeping my body as still as possible means eventually I will get some rest. It's a bit of a process that's literally taken years to figure out and polish, scratch that it's still not 100% perfect yet, because I still take at least an hour to get to sleep, but because I can enter this strange meditative half sleep it means I'm getting some rest.
Despite all of this I never thought I could have insomnia. I've heard about it and read and watched a couple of videos on the topic, but what I've gone through, go through, never seems to be exactly what insomniacs go through. It's something that I think about sometimes when I lay awake on those nights where nothing will help me fall asleep, I just have to wait till my body decides to shut itself off.
These past two weeks that thought has been going through my head even more. Although, honestly the reason I'm having even more trouble sleeping now is because it's just that oh so wonderful time of the year again. The one that so many people love and that small fraction hate. Guess, which one I'm a part of. Doesn't help that I'm going to have to actually celebrate it this year. So many things are on my mind and I can't even cuddle with Aster, because he's even busier with school than I am. So many little things that my mind decides to stress about when it could just turn itself off and go to sleep.
Maybe I'll see you around.
No comments:
Post a Comment