If all were to go swimmingly…

There always seem to be times in your life when you are plagued with sleeplessness.

Sometimes one night, sometimes two, and sometimes a year – I have decided to spend more time thinking about why it is that one can’t sleep, rather than worrying about not sleeping, or worse, counting down the hours and minutes that are left before you have to wake up.

There are always things to blame sleeplessness on- caffeine, stress, worry, excitement, life failure, success… But since life really does always seem to go on, and you always fall asleep eventually- it seems that most people don’t stop to think whether or not there is more to it than this.

When I was younger, I was frequently not sleeping.  This is a strange sentence, but it really does put it best.  I was known for two a.m. showers that screwed up the water softener cycle, running on the treadmill at midnight, reading- and then finishing a book at six a.m., or waking up to write a paper because I wasn’t about to go to sleep anyway.  For almost a full year I started the night in my bed, by two-thirty a.m. moved out to the couch, and then fell asleep watching You’ve Got Mail.  It was actually quite effective, and really my only hope for actually going to sleep.  My parents of course thought I was on the verge of death- getting by with so little sleep, and my mother (and grandmother, and aunts…) used to find aromatherapy candles and lotions for me that were called, tranquility, sleep, or peace.

My mother used to blame my overall sleeplessness on my lack of a man. Dear Saint Anne, please send me a man… she used to chant.  Although at one point after I had found a man, my sleeping habits supposedly improved, I refuse to accept this as a reasonable explanation.

Now that it’s been a few years, and I graduated from college, lived in a few different foreign countries, got married, had a real life job, and many other things, this sleeplessness still awakens every once in a while.  Since I am currently not working, and am back in school and writing my master’s thesis for the next four months, I have a pretty flexible schedule.  I really do have the once in a lifetime opportunity of waking up when I want and going to sleep when I want.  I more or less try to stay lined up with Matt (who does have classes, and almost a real schedule), but I will admit that sometimes, like last week, for example, I was going to sleep at six a.m. and waking up at twelve thirty.  Don’t be jealous of this, it’s really not that great of a lifestyle.

Redirecting my stream of consciousness… I was thinking today that this is a period in my life when I can really think about why it is that I sleep.  Or don’t sleep.

Thus far, I have concluded that location is not really an issue.  As much as I can freak myself out about the wind that seems like it is going to blow in my windows… this isn’t really an issue.  (Though I do sleep wonderfully when it is raining, but who doesn’t???).

So why is it that sometimes you just can’t sleep and you know it???

You have that strange feeling that you will just not be going to sleep for a while.