When Your Night Turns to Dawn

 There are some rare creatures on this planet that will go to bed at a normal time like everyone else, but when most people fall asleep, these others wait eyes closed for some hint of sleep. They have tried drugs, counseling, hypnosis, and millions of other ways to get more than a few minutes to an hour of sleep, these people are real, they are smart, and they are misjudged by those who can sleep.

   Night owls, insomniacs, idiots... there are many names these people go by, and as the list goes on, the names become more insulting as people understand less and less how people--myself included--suffer from the inability to sleep at night. In a house full of light sleepers, not being able to sleep is far worse than a ruff nights sleep. For if you're wide awake at 4AM, what do you do? Maybe go clean the attic. Can't do that, you'll wake up everyone else.

   Time and time again, people like myself are asked, why can't you sleep, and wearily, we tend to give the same answear; we just can't.

 ...why can't you sleep? Why not?

No matter the answear, the question will keep repeating itself, until the person thinks they understand and trying to help they go off on how they sleep at night, and how they saw on the View after the other women are all done beating up on the only smart woman on the show (the cute little blond chick, Elizabeth I believe) that you shove pickles up your nose and it'll help you sleep at night.

To simply put it, we know you're trying to help, but keep your two cents to yourself. Like depression, being unable to sleep at night is a chemical unbalance in the brain. Some of these people will lay restless for hours trying to get to sleep, but their body fights it. Others will just about never fall asleep.

Well, if you just got off the computer...

The computer has nothing to do with it. From personal experience, the computer puts me to sleep better than laying wake for 8+ hours looking at the inside of my eyelids wondering what time it is.

In fact, where groups of fellow night dwellers gather, they all admit the Internet has become more of a lifesaver if anything from the loneliness of being unable to sleep. Staying up alone every night all night takes its toll heavily on anyone mentally. We aren't--the ones I have spoken too at least--proud of what we are, but we're going to deal with it as well as we can.

 ...they have pills for that.

Nothing is more annoying then someone saying we should just take meds for this. If they really worked for us, think we would be taking them? Of course!

Like caffeine effects people differently--there are some people who get tremendously sleepy when they have caffeine--sleeping pills don't always work as intended. For me, when I have taken them, of yes, I feel tired and groggy with dizzy spells, but I am unable to sleep still. I will lie awake anyways, feeling miserable

 ...but why should I care?

You really shouldn't. You should in fact find a way to understand. People like myself want to understand how people can fall asleep at night, people who can sleep need to understand that there isn't some magical cure all for a sleep ailment.

There are people who don't understand that there isn't a difference, and that is when the name calling begins. Like people refuse to understand other races or religions, on a lesser scale the same thing happens to those of us who can't sleep.

 A typical sleepless night for myself goes about like this:

10:00PM-- Yawn
10:30PM-- Family heads to bed, I do too.
10:45PM-- I get itchy and restless/roll over
11:00PM--Roll back over
11:05PM-1:00AM-- Roll over again every 5 to ten minutes
1:05AM--Get out of bed
2:00AM-- Get back in bed
6:00AM--Had been rolling around until then, am just about to drift off, but the day has come. Unless I am lucky, and I have no plans I can sleep for an hour or so.

Hopefully other people reading this  have better luck sleeping than I.