I'm thinking of going to seattle...

"A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow."-Charlotte Bronte
Well, ruffled hair makes an itchy pillow.



8 days. It's been eight days since I've had a decent night's worth of sleep. Sleep, within those 8 days, mainly consisted of dreamless naps that would only last for about an hour. It's not a pretty feeling. I usually wake up hungry...though problem is I'm too lazy to cook anything and apparently our house hold has yet to discover junk food.

With being awake during the wee hours of morning, though I have yet to discern the difference between late night and early morning, my mind becomes sharper than ever. I find it easy to concentrate when all the noise of the awake fade and get drowned in the sound of silence. There are things that seem much more clear during those times. For example, I just realized we had stray cats living in our attic, their little footsteps seemed to scare me at first. But I grew accustomed with the sudden crashes and bumps and the occasional deathly cry. Cats are just so cute. There are other things that one notices, though these things manifest mentally rather than in a physical form.

Hamlet had a guilty heart and Edward Norton had a schizophrenic Brad Pitt. At least they knew exactly sooner or later why they were sleepless, though its was usually the latter, which proved to be "too late", at least they knew. My mind is especially irritating since, rather than thinking of the reason why I suffer from insomnia, it would much rather want to conjure thoughts that scare the living shit out of me. I'd try not to think about those things and try to distract my mind, like a book. Problem is that books have this frightful effect of engrossing me. So I end up reading a book through the night, to engrossed to sleep, not exactly an answer to my insomnia. I tried studying, nothing drowses quite like schoolwork. Well, if there's a thing as pre-reading too much, then I think I'm guilty of that. In that note, Sir's histroy book is quite a nice read, can't believe I'm more than halfway done. Though the more I read, the more I find sir to pale in comparison with Ambeth Ocampo. Ambeth has that charm of being impersonal and distanced, qualities of a historian, yet being endearing and engaging, qualities of a good storyteller. However, I can't seem to open up my Econ book, I think I prefer listening to ma'am's life story rather than reading the book, I'm sorry classmates. Listening to songs is a no go, since I hate my choice of songs. I don't have a tv in my room. I could watch movies instead, yet the same thing happens with books. Overall, I can safely say distraction isn't the answer.

"If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the sleep." -Dale Carnegie
 If I could, I would.

I worry. I'm worried that I can't sleep. Irritatingly, Alec pointed out that maybe the reason why I can't sleep is that I'm fretting too much about not being able to sleep. If things could be so easy... actually, I think he's right. I'm fretting way too much. So what happens is that I wake up after an hour of sleep, feel that I'm restless, think that I'm restless, irritated that I couldn't sleep, then try to think of ways to try to get some sleep, which, in the process, maintains my sleeplessness. On second thought, I refuse that way of thinking. If it were true, it would be stupid...of me.

There are other things I worry about, and I think it could be the reason why I can't sleep. There are things I regret and end up not doing, problems of my own fault. I think this is somehow a mechanism of me trying to win back those hours. My body tries to give me more hours so that I could do more, to properly fix what I've done. This might sound as the answer but I think it's not. This might be too well-thought of, as my body, based on experience, isn't that smart to begin with. The thing is, these extra hours mean nothing when they're spent alone in my room. There's no one to talk to, there's no one plead to, there's no one to make amends to (grammatically incorrect, but I just want it to rhyme...never mind). So I achieve nothing, and gain nothing in return, not the most efficient of plans. Actually, I'm starting to think that my body might really have thought of this insomnia.

"The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep." -E. Joseph Cossman
Precisely, why I need it.

These days, glimpses of sleep give me joy. I've been able to get as much as 4 hours of sleep twice these past 8 days. Be proud of me! Though I confess alcohol might have had a part in it. I should stop this lest I grow a habit then an addiction of it. That was a joke, don't worry. There was a time, last Thursday to be precise, when I thought that I could finally sleep. We were up in airs celebrating would be eventual sleep, and break, at that time, 3-day, or should I say night, habit. Do you know about those times when, let's say have field trip, and you're so excited to go to that field trip that you couldn't sleep. Well, as idiotic as it may sound, that happened. So excited to sleep that it was impossible to sleep. Damn it.

I'm sure there are better ways to handle insomnia. One of Murakami's short stories, entitled,  quite appropriately, "Sleep", has an unnamed protagonist pondering on, well you guessed it, sleep. The man all of a sudden stopped sleeping. Murakami is sometimes known for his themes of magical realism and surrealism, so I the protagonist really doesn't sleep. No naps or siestas, he just doesn't sleep, for 100, I think more, days. Sleep was supposed to be the natural way for people to rest and rejuvenate themselves. A body cannot function without sleep yet the protagonist feels this to be unnecessary. At first he worries if he's gonna die, but late he realizes he can just go on, and not feel any ounce of fatigue, and thus he goes on with his life not sleeping. The guy was about thirty years old, so he had some sort of social freedom. He would go and drive around for hours, eat out, drink, and do stuff he would call productive. This goes on and on until he embraces this lifestyle, and he feels this is his time to make the best out of his life. However one night, as he drove to a parking lot, he just sits there and ponders of what else can he do in life. His seeming sense of satisfaction drives him to yawn. He finally catches some sort of sign indicating sleep, but before he could celebrate, a loud knock is heard in outside his car. There are men, dressed in shady clothes, banging on her door menacingly. This scares him thinking it could be the end of his life, but before the men open his car, he nods off into sleep, presumably for 100, or even more, days. I hate my choice of books. (P.S. I remembered it was a girl not a guy who was the protagonist.)

I have to find an answer to this insomnia. I guess I could to others for some help.

"The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can't get there, is the meanest feeling in the world" -Edgar Watson Howe
Thank you Captain Obvious.

"Don't fight with the pillow, but lay down your head and kick every worriment out of your bed." -Edmund Vance Cooke
Easier said than done Mister Cooke.

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."- Dr. Seuss
Haha.

"In its early stages, Insomnia is almost an Oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge." -Colette
Okay.

"Sleep... Oh! How I loathe those little slices of death."- Edgar Allan Poe
 This is getting scary.

"For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is to shallow, it will not cover one." -Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Okay, I'm stopping now.

I think I should stop writing now, I need/want/long to sleep. Plus, I think I've worked more on this blog than my manuscript. A certain someone would get angry at me for that. I've been way way past deadline and have not concluded. The worry of this person's anger brings fear and embarrassment into my heart. So much so, that the anxiety and uneasiness could drive a man mad, mad enough to lose sleep over it...oh.