Insomnia. (Mind-turn off. I'd like to fall asleep)

Oh insomnia, the bane of my existence.
I remember when I met you. It was a cool night in November and I was sixteen years old. I could see the leaves of the trees blowing in the wind, lit up ever so slightly by the wasteful office tower lights of downtown Toronto. Sixteen years old and at Sick Kids hospital. Insomnia, have you ever taught me a few lessons.

Lesson 1: If you're going to be an insomniac, be one on the 7th floor of Sick Kids. Some of my best memories of being in the hospital (a two month stay and I have good memories, I'm secretly a positive thinker) are from 2am on a weekday night. The nurses would come in and watch Blind Date and The 5th Wheel bus with me while my mother was asleep on the tiny couch.
My mother and insomnia have never met.

Lesson 2: Insomnia will follow you where ever you go. You can't escape it. And just when you think you've escaped it, it finds you again. I sit here and write this almost 8 years after that hospital stay. I promise you I have spent, in total, only 1460 nights out of 2920 sleeping.
My insomnia has followed me to Canmore, Alberta, New York City, Paris, three cities in Austria, Scotland and to various apartments across downtown Toronto. It shows no mercy for such a thing as jetlag.

Lesson 3: Insomnia shows no mercy. It does not matter whether your dog just died, your boyfriend broke your heart, or you got into a fight with your best friend-- there is no such thing as crying yourself to sleep. There is only such thing as crying, becoming more frustrated that you're not asleep and then spending the rest of your dark hours overanalyzing your life.

Lesson 4: Insomnia will make you hate the ones you love. If I could count the amount of hours I've spent glaring at someone asleep beside me, it would probably be enough numbers to put me to sleep. I don't just mean men. I've glared at my girl friends, my mother, my boyfriends and my dog equally. (Lesson 4.5, insomnia will even make you hate your dog.) I have almost ended relationships based on the fact that the guys would get angry when I'd wake them up out of boredom. Let's face it, I'm needy 24 hours a day. When you're an insomniac there is no rest period. You're on all the time. Which leads me to...

Lesson 5: Insomnia is exhausting. Let's put aside the fact that not sleeping at night leaves you exhausted for the day ahead of you. For me, insomnia means hours of unnecessary thinking. I have spent hours overanalyzing the most minute details of my existence. Such analyzing as: is my right thigh bigger than my left? Will people lose respect for me if I don't finish university? If I get a new fish, I want to name it Cat Power. But if I get a new fish, will I keep it alive longer than the last one? (five days) Did all those relationships end because of me? If so, what did I do wrong? Oh it wasn't me, I'm perfect. It's their faults. But those are a lot of people to be at fault...
And so on. It's tiring. It's unhealthy. And for the amount of extra hours awake in a day, it is completely unproductive.

Lesson 6: Don't go to a sleep clinic for your insomnia. It will be the worst 18 hours of life. The fact that these night nurses expect you to sleep with 30 electrodes placed on your head and all over your body is criminal enough. The fact that you will hear the sleep apneia patients snoring while you lie awake for the sixth hour is enough to make you flat out bitter. My experience was this: they cover you in electrodes at 8pm . Lights off at 10pm. From 10pm to 63o am the nurses ask you to stop moving around so much and to try to sleep. Lights on at 630. Day time nap tests. Out the door at 5pm with electrode glue embedded in your hair and skin and homicidal thoughts about the nurses who told you to "try to sleep".

Lesson 7: I am without a doubt convinced that all serial killers are insomniacs. If you didn't sleep for 10 days straight, you would go a little bit crazy too.

Which leaves me on March 29, 2010. I've been an insomniac for 8 years. I have not killed anybody but I've thought about it. When all I want to do is go to sleep but my upstairs neighbours are moving furniture at 330am, my mind instantly goes to me throwing them off their balcony. When a man is sleeping beside me I assume he's in my bed because he cares about me. But when he does not wake up to spend these frustrating hours with me, I begin to detest him and wonder how long it would take for him to lose consciousness if I smothered him with the pillow I'm not sleeping on.

The problem with insomnia is that it is the ultimate way for the universe to screw you over. The epic battle of human vs. insomnia is a futile one. Human will never win. There is not enough weed, Ambien or alcohol to rid this cruel affliction from oneself. Trust me, I would know. God knows I've tried.
I think this is appropriate for my first "How To Survive When the Universe Is Against You" post. With all the lessons I've learned over the past eight years, I'm still awake at 3:30am. The good news is that I'm still alive. I'm surviving one night at a time.
I'm only surviving because I know it's a battle I personally will never win. Admitting defeat is a good step forward in situations such as these. It makes the darkness a lot less threatening when you don't expect to win a nightly war.
(Change the wording and apply this to every aspect of your life).