Can't get no sleep

Normally, I would balk at the use of a double negative, but at this stage, I’m so sleep deprived it seems utterly appropriate.

Yes, insomnia. I’ve got it bad, and it is driving me crazy. What is really driving me nuts is the fact that I only really had insomnia proper, as it were, on Sunday night – the kind of deal where you’re lying there, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, unable to get comfortable in whatever position you try – under/over covers, 1 pillow, 2 pillows, no pillow, on your back, your front, aaaggh, and you’ve got roughly 489 random thoughts racing round your brain like an anxiety version of the Wheel of Fortune – but with no possibility of cash prizes - spend 4 seconds fretting about work, the wheel spins again and you’ve got 20 minutes of wondering what to have for lunch the next day, then you feel hungry, but are too tired to drag yourself out of bed to make anything to eat, then you’re off again and before you know it, you’re questioning all of your major life choices and wondering about alternative careers in the yak farming industry and so on and so forth.

Think I eventually drifted off around 4am, after trying all the tricks in the book – read for a bit, drink milk, have a light snack, inhale lavender oil, yadda yadda yadda. Felt like the undead on Monday morning. But the annoying thing now is that on Monday night, I wasn’t particularly anxious about anything, but my body clock now appears to be set to switch off only at 4 am, which was the pattern on Tuesday night and last night. So now I have ‘sleep debt’. Probably about 18 hour’s worth. When am I going to pay that off?

What if I can’t sleep again tonight? That’s more sleep debt – and trust me, I don’t need any more debt, of any kind. Sheesh. Anyway, as I was ransacking my bookshelves for something to read at 2.30am last night, I found this poem, by Fleur Adcock, which made me smile, at least:

Things

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse
and worse.
________

Hmm. I wonder if I put my head down on the desk now, and took a little siesta, if anyone would notice?