Sunday, January 04, 2004
Insomnia
"Night is the hardest time to be alive, and four a.m. knows all my secrets." Poppy Z. Brite* (From Lost Souls)
I can't really work after 9 p.m. I am a classic morning person. Whatever I write after nine is pretty much drivel. So, when I have things to do I still make myself stop at nine. I know if I continue I just have to re-write it in the morning.
Now, normally at some point between 3 and 4 in the morning I wake up. Sometimes I have had a nightmare and I am in cold sweats. I am 24 years old and I still have the most horrible nightmares. Stephen King ain't got shit on the crap my brain comes up with.
Other times I am just stressed out and 3 in the morning is a paralyzing hour for me. I lay there with the mental ability to think about it all. I mean absolutely all of it, but with a complete inability to do anything about it. If I am still awake by four I am so tired I could cry. Sometimes I do.
I have a billion temporary solutions to this problem and non of them works two times in a row. If I am fortunate the insomnia comes early. Like, I will go to bed at ten and wake at 12:30 for a couple of hours. The really horrible nights I wake at like 3:55 and don't get back to sleep till like 5:30 which is a bitch when you have to wake up at 7.
When I was in high school it was the worst because I also suffered from depression. I would scribble countless pages in my journal, pages of nothing and everything that nobody saw.
I can at least say now it is better. Most of my problems are temporary and the ones that aren't, my brain can hush them by reminding them that I am in my own bed. Scratching out your own place in this world is a great way to quiet your demons.
The full quote from above is, "Night is the hardest time to be alive and four a.m. knows all my secrets. I do whatever it takes to get me through the night." And I have, and it makes me sleep a little better.
*An aside, Poppy Z. Brite is an amazing author. She wrote her first book, Lost Souls, when she was exceedingly young and reading it makes me so jealous of her capabilities. I wouldn't call her work horror, but other people do, I think it is an over simplification of work that is much more complex than most people realize. If you can't take a little guy on guy action, don't read her books. If that is what prevents you from reading her books, you are a fool. She captures something in her work that very few contemporary fiction authors do. If you like vampires read Lost Souls, if you like comics and music read Drawing Blood. There are others, I still can't find my copy of her short story collection, but those are two very good books.
"Night is the hardest time to be alive, and four a.m. knows all my secrets." Poppy Z. Brite* (From Lost Souls)
I can't really work after 9 p.m. I am a classic morning person. Whatever I write after nine is pretty much drivel. So, when I have things to do I still make myself stop at nine. I know if I continue I just have to re-write it in the morning.
Now, normally at some point between 3 and 4 in the morning I wake up. Sometimes I have had a nightmare and I am in cold sweats. I am 24 years old and I still have the most horrible nightmares. Stephen King ain't got shit on the crap my brain comes up with.
Other times I am just stressed out and 3 in the morning is a paralyzing hour for me. I lay there with the mental ability to think about it all. I mean absolutely all of it, but with a complete inability to do anything about it. If I am still awake by four I am so tired I could cry. Sometimes I do.
I have a billion temporary solutions to this problem and non of them works two times in a row. If I am fortunate the insomnia comes early. Like, I will go to bed at ten and wake at 12:30 for a couple of hours. The really horrible nights I wake at like 3:55 and don't get back to sleep till like 5:30 which is a bitch when you have to wake up at 7.
When I was in high school it was the worst because I also suffered from depression. I would scribble countless pages in my journal, pages of nothing and everything that nobody saw.
I can at least say now it is better. Most of my problems are temporary and the ones that aren't, my brain can hush them by reminding them that I am in my own bed. Scratching out your own place in this world is a great way to quiet your demons.
The full quote from above is, "Night is the hardest time to be alive and four a.m. knows all my secrets. I do whatever it takes to get me through the night." And I have, and it makes me sleep a little better.
*An aside, Poppy Z. Brite is an amazing author. She wrote her first book, Lost Souls, when she was exceedingly young and reading it makes me so jealous of her capabilities. I wouldn't call her work horror, but other people do, I think it is an over simplification of work that is much more complex than most people realize. If you can't take a little guy on guy action, don't read her books. If that is what prevents you from reading her books, you are a fool. She captures something in her work that very few contemporary fiction authors do. If you like vampires read Lost Souls, if you like comics and music read Drawing Blood. There are others, I still can't find my copy of her short story collection, but those are two very good books.
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