My own version of insomnia

I struggle with sleep.

Sleep and I do not see eye to eye.

I need a lot of sleep to feel my best. Nine to ten hours, preferably. Of course, with three small children, that rarely never happens.

I do everything I'm supposed. No screens for an hour before sleepy time, no food for three hours before sleepy time. Bedroom is a haven for sleep: it's neat and organized with no TV. I get myself in bed and under the blankets by a reasonable hour (ten, most nights).

Yet sleep eludes me.

Oh, I sleep for a bit. But then, somewhere around two in the morning, my brain fires up and starts doing the nuttiest stuff.

Like singing just one line from Tangled's "At Last I See the Light" ad nauseum. No exaggeration, it sounds like a broken record in my head, and I kinda want to cut someone to make it stop.

Or making mental lists of all the things I will need to do SOMEDAY. Not even tomorrow or next week. Like... next year. And I get all panicky about it; heart races, stomach ties itself in knots. Major panic.

And then I realize I have to pee.

By that time, it's three-thirty, and my alarm is set to go off in ninety minutes. Considering it generally takes me a solid thirty minutes to fall asleep, it hardly seems worth it.

So, here I am, having eaten a bowl of cereal already, at four in the morning, writing.

Always writing.