the sleep of the unjust

I have insomnia.

"Try wine," Sako suggested just now over IM. "It always helps me. Or whiskey."

Or Bailey's. Or Kahlua. Or--

"Or exercise," she added thoughtfully. "But don't exercise before you sleep."

I'm not sure I understand that. Does she mean I should exercise while I am asleep? Unconscious exercising? If only.

Everybody is full of advice when they hear that you have insomnia. It's like the hiccups: public domain and entertainment for the masses. "Do you have too much on your mind?" a coworker asked. "Are you really stressed out about something?"

I'm stressed out about not being able to sleep. It's gone on for almost two weeks now, with last night being the worst yet. At 4 AM I lay in bed, thinking quite seriously about just getting up and driving to work. Out of sheer perversity I stayed in bed until 5 AM, then 6 AM, and played cat's cradle in the dark without any string.

It's amazing the kinds of idiotic things it occurs to you to do when you're sleepless in the night.

"Are you going to go all Fight Club on me?" another coworker asked, which -- I suppose is a pop reference I should get, but I don't. Something to do with split personalities. He explained it to me. I forgot what he was saying almost before he was done. This is the problem with not sleeping. Your brain starts to go. God knows I'm no mastermind during the best of times, but this is getting ridiculous.

"Too much caffeine."

Thank you. I hadn't thought of that.

"I drank one cup of coffee yesterday," I told him. Caffeine is not something I regularly indulge in. "I had to, in order to stay awake during the day. Because I was sleepy. Because I have insomnia."

It all made sense to me when I said it, but I'm not entirely sure now. Somewhere along the line, that argument appears to have looped around and ended up back where it started.

I don't know.

I would kill to be able to lie down and grab a solid 24 hours.