Insomnia

I'm one of those people who thinks sleep, though a lovely state, is 1) kind of creepy and 2) a waste of my time. We prepare ourselves for unconsciousness and then we spend roughly 1/3 of our time in this state, laying there, strangely vulnerable (and if you've ever been to a slumber party, you know what I mean). It just seems kind of odd, when I think about it. I love to stay busy and sometimes I feel resentful of the time I spend unconscious. Imagine everything I could get done during that time! Yes, I enjoy sleep -- I am not depraved. But as a person who has more ideas than time, I have to admit that the only time I truly have free is that which I waste during sleep.

Tonight I'm oddly awake. It may be the residual effect of this cold I seem to have. Every now and again I (luckily) succumb to the lure of insomnia. My husband is the same way. I don't think I would enjoy insomnia permanently, however. The night can seem lonely and not simply because everyone else is asleep. I don't like the feeling of the darkness pressing in on me. I'd prefer the feeling of the open, sunlit sky stretching on for ages. It's odd, isn't it? I like the day because the world seems boundless but I dislike the night because it makes me feel closed-in, despite the fact that it mirrors the darkness found in the most expansive concept conceivable by our little human brains -- the universe itself.

My dog is the polar opposite of me in regards to how she spends her time. I look at her laying around half snoozing in the middle of the day and think "she needs to get a hobby." I just can't imagine being a dog, spending my time waiting for people to play with me or for the sound of the can of food being popped open. It seems so....dependant. She is rarely too busy to lay down for a nap. If I tried that, I'd literally be in for a rude awakening.

When I was in college, I knew a woman who was an insomniac and had been so for as long as she could remember. She got by on just a couple of hours of sleep a night. It sounded intriguing to me when she talked about it but there was a slight problem. She actually slept far less than her parents from the time she was a toddler. Her earliest memories were of playing in her room in the darkness of the middle of the night while everyone else slept. I can't imagine all of the trouble a kid could get into with that kind of sleep schedule!

I remembered this when my kids were small and began skipping their second nap at around 6 months and abandoning naps altogether before the age of two. When my husband was a kid he wasn't much of a napper either. Some well-meaning grandmother types commented that my kids must be somehow sleep deprived or that I was keeping them up despite their need for sleep. Sure, any mother wanting a moment's peace is going to purposely keep her kids awake to do what...torture herself?

I might as well head for bed. I'm finally tired.