There's never much rhyme or reason for when he'll show up. Strangely enough, I picture him a mixture of the suave Clark Gable, obnoxious Screech from Save by the Bell and Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. Starts out harmless even charming. Sure, I'll stay up! I have work to get done. I love this book. I should write, I honestly dont mind, this works.
Hours later it turns into a battle of wits. I begin to feel annoyed by this pest, he hovers and sticks close like a stalking ex. His voice no longer is enticing but is nails on a chalk board. Worse yet, I'm so many hours in sleep debt, I no longer can focus enough to be productive and my vision blurs everything that I sit in a fog of self-pity and dread for morning.
By the end (or morning)... It turns into a heated match of bitter thoughts and angry tears. But just like Gaston, he always gets what he wants. And I crawl out of bed exhausted of hours of tossing and turning and furious with everything that breathes.
For me, he usually resides either at the foot of my bed, legs crossed, smirking. Although when he really is heated up he paces my room like a detective on the edge of breaking a cold case. Sometimes he has such a good time, he stays for several nights mocking my inability to drift into unconsciousness. It's almost a game for him.
Some nights I'll feel like I have him beat or I outwitted him, I'll do all the tricks (read, drink chamomile, listen to Mozart)... I'll start to drift but some how I end up wide awake trying to ignore him... He's as fickle and just as stubborn as I am.
I've met my match.
So I thought I'd do some research.
According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services approximately 65 million Americans regularly suffer from insomnia each year. Insomnia is 41% more common in women than in men.
Total Population of America is currently 307,006,550 (which is steadily growing in 1990 we just hit 250 million)
By definition, insomnia is the difficulty of "initiating or maintaining sleep" and is classified as actual insomnia when this pattern continues after a total of one month.
Apparently there are three very basic types of insomnia.
1. Transient insomnia: which is a short term more circumstantial than actual mental disorder form of insomnia. For example this is what happens when you sleep in a new bed or travel to a new place. It's basically caused by the unfamiliar setting that your subconscious has trouble making peace. It can last up for a week but rarely persists and if it does can I recommend maybe a little feng shui?
2. Acute Insomnia: This is the guy that who is committed but like your favorite songs will usually lose his spark and whimper away when you are finally overwhelmed with fatigue after a month or so of not sleeping. There's not much rhyme or reason to when he'll drop in, usually from periods of stress or over emotional times. But sometimes can just take charge without any legitimate backing.
3. Chronic Insomnia: This sucker basically is a second roommate from hell. But lucky or maybe unlucky there is usually always a reason. Chronic insomnia is usually a telling sign that something is obviously wrong in your conscious mind that is affecting your subconscious. When you have chronic insomnia it has been reported that it causes muscle fatigue, mental fatigue and hallucinations-- in other words, you'll lose your mind if you don't get help.
So its obvious that sleep is important, you can tell the difference when you wake up smiling compared to when you wake up wanting to rip the sun in half and shoot the morning bird. We all know why we love the weekends and hate mondays--it revolves around sleep.
So after thinking about this I couldnt help broaden my knowledge about Insomnia's inherit arch nemesis, Sleep.
The science of sleep is relatively modern, but it is right to assume that is vital for a human being's capability to function. The record amount of time a person went with out sleep in 18 days 21 hours and 40 minutes believe it or not it was in a rocking chair contest... The guy was so delusion I'm surprised he even survived
REM (rapid eye movement) is the deepest stage of sleeping (being a total of 3 stages, if my memory is correct), and is characterized by, if it isnt already obvious by its name, rapid eye movement. This rapid eye movement is thought to be caused by dreams. In REM dreams, the plots are often bizarre and have little coherency where as non-REM dreams are simple and repetitive.
The eye movements in REM sleeping are actually very similar to if you were watching a film meaning that your eyes correspond with what you are actually dreaming/seeing. The most recent breakthroughs on sleep have only happened in the last 25 years.
I recently read that dreaming actually makes you smarter, not in the conventional way. For example, your not smarter just cause your well rested. But instead these REM sleepers were more inclined to see connections between objects, ideas and thoughts that were not seen by the non-REM sleepers. Boosted memory and also being able to plan for the future have also been noted as positive attributes to these deep sleepers. Which is interesting because now scientists believe that with stronger sleeping patterns people will be able to draw closer connections with past events and be able to apply them to the future of the unknown, giving them a lofty title of "crystal ball" sleepers.
Dreaming and sleeping (or lack there of) has quickly become a hot topic in the scientific world as well as pop culture (Inception?) It will be interesting to know the facts in the next few years.
As for now, I will battle it out with my pillow and I'll let you know if any of my personal remedies have any effect. As for now, I've taken up Belle's method of running away from one beast to the arms of another.
The new beast: writers block.
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