I am a paranoid, insomniac, stressaholic person.
If you drop at my place by night, you will certainly find me into deep reading by moonlight, sipping a cup of warm cinnamon tea, or wondering in the darkness about possible and terrifying evil plan set against my person by Fate itself than happy sleeping, cuddled under the blankets with a baby-like smile on my face?
I plead guilty, I am a bad sleeper to the bones.
It all may have started by a fair night of summer, when grasshoppers were far more common around my house than concrete or houses. I lived days of bliss after days of bliss, and night of reading after night of reading. I was a child, maybe 8 years old, and had no other worries than living day after day. Night and its peaceful darkness were like a comfortable chair I enjoyed to cuddles in, with a lamp torch as faithful companion. Came a day when I decided to assist to a “white night” as we say in French. That’s what you call insomnia in my place. I never seen white sky of course, maybe one or two stars, before giving up, exhausted, around midnight.
Teenagers day came too fast. We moved from countryside to suburbia. Hopefully music appeared and soothed that clumsiness in me. Hopefully again, books hadn’t deserted, on the contrary, they started invade my territory, one by one. One night I decided not to sleep at all. This was going to be my particularity. From The-girl-who-wears-ugly-glasses, I was going to be The-girl-who-never-sleeps-more-than-6 hours. I was a scorched poet, my soul was filled with Poe’s and Baudelaire’s paradises. I could swear I sensed their distress more than anyone else, and without Absynth. A last, I could control a part of my life, well, my night. No one could ever take that away from me, never.
It went ok until college days. I was top ranking in every single classes but mathematics (they never agreed on my theories that’s why). But college…The love of darkness turned into the hatred of the alarm clock. I used to give up, exhausted, at 3 am, to wake up 4 hours later even more tired than the previous days. I was a zombie, and as soon as night was falling upon the city which now provided my nights with tramways clattering instead of silence. Orange lights were burning my windows, and I started at their neverending shadows with ghostly eyes. Night had betrayed me, and for the first time I had to take medicine against its powers.
Came working days. And a better sleep, due to cold and physical exhaustion. Then came illness, which transformed even day into sleepy times.
Worst was yet to arrive. It roughly started around October, to be at its highest in February. My life at a standstill was gonna change, dragging old habits into new ones, leaving old friends and meeting new ones. I dreaded rejection, a feeling of loneliness despite being bathed in love 24/24h by my fiancé. Insomnia had became synonym of emotional stress, countless questions about would-I-fit-in and what-do-they-think, and too many tears alike. Learning to let go again. Becoming the little child always smiling in the pictures, who could have become friends with a marble statue and have it laugh if she wanted to. Where has that little girl gone to? As I take potions after potions to ease the beating of my heart, and the panic crises that got me down about once or twice, I wish she could hold my hand again, and soothe all my fears away.
I wish she could transform the nightmares into peaceful dreams again.
So that insomnia becomes nothing but a memory….
