I never really put much thought into the reason for sleep until I stopped sleeping.

 Mind you, it wasn't my decision to suddenly develop insomnia, but rather some cruel joke played by my brain at night...it's like it just knew that it was time to lay head to pillow, sprawl my little legs out under the blanket and curl my toes over the edge of the mattress...but no. Nope, that isn't allowed.

Oftentimes the random influx of thought-flow would subside rather quickly, and my body was able to drift off into the 8-hour comatose state that it enjoys every night, but then there were those nights. The nights where I would have drowned in thought bubbles, or suffocated in post-it notes; the nights that I would sit there thinking these inadvertently strange things for absolutely no reason.

It began to drive me insane.

I was crazed during the day, wondering how these weird little thoughts would slip into my head...thoughts about why a spider has eight legs, and why there are bugs that look like spiders but they really aren't spiders because they have 10 legs and what if that meant that there were really different breeds of arachnids that really aren't spiders but they sort of are because they look like a spider and they act like a spider and isn't a rose...shit what's the quote? It's something about smelling sweet, I hate Shakespeare.......

It went on, 

and on,

and on.

For hours upon hours on end, until finally I'd had enough.

"Mom, I'm not sleeping. I don't know what's wrong with me, I just can't sleep. My mind won't stop going. It's not the nightmares again...it's just, thoughts! Random ass thoughts, mom. What is wrong with me?"

My doctor can't find anything wrong, sleeping pills don't work...they just make the thinking a little bit more blurry and less train-of-thought, more "ooh, sparkly!" Nothing; natural supplements, prescription drugs (that have been prescribed to me), self-hypnosis, relaxation, yoga, breathing, meditation...none of it was working. 

Then my mother finally decided to come visit and fix me herself. You know how moms are. Hi, mom.

Other emotional things were weighing me down, and she finally just placed the executive judgement that little 'ol me needed a dose of mama-loving. The first night she had me come sleep with her and somehow, she got me to go to sleep at 10:30 p.m. and I slept through the night. 

The whole time she was there, I slept soundly, like a bear in the dead of winter. Then she left, and you know what? I slept through the night again...in my parents' room of the apartment--where no one sleeps for 2/3 of the month, thank you very much.

Last night I returned to my bed, but I didn't sleep...

...and in the moment before I finally got my brain to quiet down, I realized that my room doesn't have a door. 

-a