Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Eyes wide shut

Insomnia is a relentless and restless monster.

After a couple of hours of sleep last night, I suddenly found myself wide awake. Not an alert, adrenalined kind of awake. Rather a tired, depersonalised, eyes-wide-shut kind of lack of asleep-ness. No amount of counting sheep or tossing and turning or bargaining with myself brought on the sleep I was craving. Even the few moments of sleep were filled with tumultuous dreams that would wrench me back to reality with a start.

When going to the bathroom and a glass of warm soy milk didn't help, I tried to think about what could possibly be disturbing me enough to ward off sleep in this manner. Nothing I could particularly put my finger on.

So I decided to do what my laptop calls a 'full system scan', into the dark inner recesses of my mind. Down the soft, creaking, wooden steps, into the basement. Shone a flashlight around the murky depths, trying to peer past the cobwebs to see what lay in wait.

And I found the following sources of deep stress:
a) A Sudoku puzzle which has had me stumped for the past three weeks, which believe me has been rankling and festering
b) A heated debate with Caveboy about the way one should fold socks after the laundry, which is still TBD upon his return
c) A general angst about my eyebrows, which if inspected closely, never appear symmetrical

I suspect that my id would have been something of a disappointment to Freud.

This morning I came in to work to find an especially busy day yawning in front of me. After a sleepless night, alertness might be too much to ask for. But I do hope I don't succumb to random bouts of narcolepsy. Which is just the kind of cruel joke my mind would play on me.

1 comment:

Inihtar said...

Oh no! Should I take at least some of the blame for the Sudoku-induced part of your sleeplessness? Sorry :-( Hope tonight's better!