I went to bed at nine o’clock last night, woke up at one o’clock this morning for no reason, and couldn’t go back to sleep. It was time to give up, crawl out of bed, and take a walk outside. The temperature was easily over eighty degrees, but the heat wasn’t what bothered me because it was cool in my apartment. What made me lose sleep were thoughts I couldn’t control–thoughts about the past and future, regrets over what I did and what I never did.

I was never a good sleeper. Some people sleep just fine, from the minute they go to bed to the second their alarm goes off. I can’t relate to those people. They usually snore, keeping everyone else awake.

My college roommate used to snore, and it drove me insane. Sometimes I thought about that scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when the patient smothered the Jack Nicholson character with a pillow. Now I would never do that, but man, there were thoughts.

When I have insomnia, I want the rest of the world to have it so I won’t feel alone. It’s so quiet outside that I believe everyone is sleeping except for me, which is untrue. A lot of people lose sleep. I read that one out of three adults suffers from it, and it can lead to obesity and diabetes, not to mention anxiety and depressive disorders.

There had to be a way to combat the insomnia. I watched YouTube videos while I was up until three o’clock before I tried to go back to sleep. My brain just wouldn’t shut off. Then my alarm sounded at five o’clock in the morning, when I usually get up. I hate the song that plays on my iPhone. The piano is too haunting, like a ghost is going to crawl out from under the bed. It vaguely sounds like the theme to The Exorcist. I turn it off right away and jump out of bed. Sometimes my hand, with a mind of its own, hits the snooze accidentally so the song repeats. But all of the other songs are just as bad. I can’t win with the alarm because it sucks to be awakened by anything, such as a chainsaw outside of my window when someone is chopping up a tree, or a bunch of cackling crows that make me want to throw a coffee can at them and watch them fly away.

Now I’m at the coffee shop, half dead, and I have to work today. It’s going to be another long week. I just hope that tonight I can sleep the whole night through.