insomnia, sleeplessness…whatever….

insomnia sucks

So, I woke at 1.30 am this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. It’s not unusual for me to suffer varying degrees of insomnia but this is a little extreme. AND before I snuggled down for the night I took 2 of the herbal sleeping tablets recommended by the lady in the health shop. Hmmm. Bit of a waste of thirty bucks, 2 hours wages…yeah, probably shouldn’t go down that track really seeing as it’s only 4.30 am and technically still irrational nighttime thinking patterns apply.

In fairness, I’ve a lot going on at the moment. That might cause insomnia. Then again it might not.

Because of my stomach problems and the things which have gravitated from intolerance to allergy, I don’t absorb iron and B12 and so get fortnightly injections. It could be that. Then again, maybe not. Do chemical imbalances cause insomnia? I don’t know but I’m awake enough to realise that Googling something at this time of night isn’t the greatest plan. I’ll end up with everything from asthma to a zoonoses if I’m not careful.

I don’t have any answers; my doctor has none either. He doesn’t want to give me high dose drugs and most of them are coated in lactose anyway, but I don’t want to take them. My permanent state of existence must be quite close to zombie mode because pills tend to send me over the edge into full blown un-dead.

It’s only when faced with TV in the early hours that you realise how utterly rubbish it is. Emmerdale looked interesting but seemed to have some kind of Ground Hog Day thing going on and after they’d repeated the second episode twice; I got the message. The TV controllers don’t care about people like me; they’re running stuff just to fill the airwaves and think nobody notices. Every other channel was filled with the dreaded infomercials; an hour of some guy shouting to make me look at his amazing ladders or a woman wobbling body parts on some kind of toning table to make me want one. I already have the wobbling body parts thanks and getting a credit card out at this time of night isn’t the flashest idea.

I watched a rerun of Jeremy Kyle USA which I think I saw about a month ago on one of my other nightly vigils and the deadbeat dad was still just as gormless and undeserving of the cute little girl he’d fathered by accident.

I sorted out my mailing lists into segments and amended my signup forms. I played with my website and made some things prettier. I snorted through some old photos of myself; when I first started publishing and realised with horror that people wanted to see what I looked like. Yes that was SNORTED and not sorted. Some of them were hideous and no, I’m not sharing.

So I kicked back and relaxed in Husband’s recliner with the cat snoozing next to me. I started to feel a little droopy and then…yeah, my Fitbit buzzed on my wrist to tell me to get up for a run. 4.45 am, my usual time for exercising. But it’s a bank holiday so I won’t be and my body isn’t working properly so it might be a terrible idea ending in a trip to the emergency room. Probably.

I took pills for my headache and they gave me stomach ache so I watched Better Homes and Gardens and tried not to count the minutes I wasted by NOT sleeping. It’s actually surprising how fast the time goes at night when you’re aware you should be doing something else. The clock seems to dash through the hours and I find myself measuring my achievements with a sense of dismay. I can’t sleep so I should be writing or using the time more profitably. But I’m not.

I’ve enrolled on the Mark Dawson FB course and I should be listening to another podcast, but I know my notes won’t make sense in the cold light of day and I’ll make mistakes. Last week I wrote over 10 thousand words between the hours of 3 am and 6 am on various mornings and today, I can’t be bothered. I check Facebook because when I wake up each morning it feels like I’ve missed so much. It’s typical; I’m awake and watching and nobody’s posting anything. Those in the UK are doing fun stuff and those on my side of the world are sleeping.

It’s only me who’s awake on this Queen’s birthday bank holiday. Me. Watching American shows where men drive around in white vans buying junk which isn’t junk and selling it for heaps more than they paid.

I don’t know what the answer is to this sleeplessness. Is it insomnia? I’ve no idea. I just know that I’m awake and nobody else is. Again.

I feel like an astronaut lost in space. I want to post an SOS message.

Instead I’ll make another cup of tea which as all Brits know; tea helps with EVERYTHING and I’ll go back to watching the clock spin round while I achieve absolutely nothing. If only I felt like doing something…..

K T Bowes is the author of 16 mystery/romance novels. She isn’t usually nocturnal and somehow manages to hold down a part time archiving job in between writing, publishing, blogging and complaining. Check out her novels HERE. The first in series are FREE so help yourself.

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