Elusive.

Lying awake, her mind races. So much going on in her head. Why can’t she just switch it off? It’s so frustrating. She’s exhausted, has not had a decent night’s sleep in days. Can barely keep her eyes open, but as soon as she lays down, everything changes.

She’s been in bed for over two hours, so much in her head, unable to sleep, irritated. Why is she bringing all this stuff home with her?

She’s fully awake again now, her eyes feel dry and scratchy when open, and full of shards of glass when closed.

And still her mind races.

Get it all out of your head, she thinks. Write it down, talk it out, sing, drink, take pills, walk it off.

Everyone has a million ideas about how to get to sleep, but nobody can fix it for you.

You would think sheer exhaustion would be enough.

But it’s not.

…

I was cleaning up my phone this weekend, organizing all of my notes. Remember I used to write stories on planes? Well they’re all in the Notes App on my phone and they were completely disorganized. So tonight, I organized them and found a bunch of little pieces like this one that I’d forgotten. I’ve set up a few to post here over the next week or so.

I wrote this one some time (months) ago. After midnight. Mid-week. I still have the occasional night like this (sometimes), but not very often thank goodness.

I don’t think I’ve gotten any better at switching off my brain. I’m just not so overwhelmed anymore. Not right now, anyway.

I’m sure you can all relate to the feeling of not being able to get to sleep. It happens to all of us at some time or another. It’s irritating. It’s frustrating. But it is what it is. Hopefully, you can deal with whatever it is that’s worrying you, talk it out with someone you care about, who cares about you. Get it out of your head, and then relax.

And sleep.

I was very tempted to try all of those “cures” mentioned above (one at a time of course) and write about my experiences, but I guess I didn’t get there.

I did, however, get to sleep 😊

x desleyjane