Today

Today I was reminded that I am generally alone in this thing called "chronic insomnia".  That despite being surrounded by amazing loved ones who would lay their lives down for me, well-meaning acquaintances who think they "get it", or doctors who look at it with a scientific eye, no one will ever understand what it's like to be me.


I spent many hours crying today.

Chronic insomnia is a horribly lonely disorder.  I have always said this.  As a child, it was lonely in a scary way. There is nothing more terrifying to a child with a sleep disorder than bed time- the time when everyone in your giant house is going to nod off and you will be alone, in the silent and dark, for the next 12 hours without the ability to distract yourself because you're a child. As an adult, it's a more sad, deep, loneliness that doesn't only come at night.  The nighttime loneliness still happens- I assure you. The realization as my husband falls asleep that there is only so much art, only so many podcasts, only so much reading I can do.  That there will be hours I lay in bed, in the dark, pretending I may fall asleep but never acheieving it.  That I will feel like the only person awake in a world that is resting.

But there is another, more insidious loneliness.  The one where your family asks "why don't you go to bed earlier?" and your friends ask how you could be tired at 8 pm "if you never really sleep". When your wonderful husband wants to take you flying or hiking or house-searching at 9 am and you don't want to say no, so you try to bargain with the gods for just one, real, night of sleep and when it doesn't come, you are so angry and sad and anxious when you look at the clock and it's 8 am that you want to just run away. Just crawl into a hole and hibernate. I feel I could hibernate for 6 months and never make up for 30 years od insomnia. When you wake up at 2 after falling asleep at 10am and everyone is gone, living their lives, and you are ashamed, alone, and tired. So tired. And so convinced that everyone just thinks you're lazy.  When people think it's funny to joke "You never sleep!" or "You won't be awake for breakfast!" and all it does is break your heart a little bit each time. When you are left out of social events because everyone knows you won't sleep, won't be awake... “When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep, and you’re never really awake.”

Everyone wants to fit in.Chronic insomnia not only isolates me by creating a state of being that no one really understands, it further hurts me by creating a stigma about me that I'm lazy, I'm depressed, I'm crazy.  Maybe I am crazy. Who wouldn't be after not sleeping for this long?

I don't know what my hope is for this blog.  Part of me wants it to be a place people can direct others when they want their families to "understand" insomnia.  Part of me just wants a place to write when I'm awake and lonely. We'll see where it takes me.

Change of pace.

This blog was, years ago, just something to try.

It has now changed.  I am a chronic insomnia sufferer and have been my entire life.  I will be using this as my late night journal.  For now it's for my own therapeutic reasons. If you stumble upon it, great. I'll probably at some point make my loved ones aware of it but for now I just need a place to get it out. A place I can be accountable to get it out, too. Get it off my chest. Not obsess when I should be horizontal.


So here it is: So Not Horizontal- an insomnia blog.