zzZ

5.20am in the morning. No idea why I am here at this moment. I’ve been awake since 4 plus and I assure you this is not result from sleeping too much and thus waking up at wee hours in the morning. My back and legs are still aching from excessive walking in not so comfortable shoes. Maybe that’s the reason. Usually I’ll continue my dreams after some lying around. It doesn't seem like that today.

When I was younger, like 4 or 5, I was afraid of being unable to fall asleep. I was still sleeping in my parents’ room at that time. Eventually the fear would get to me and tears start forming in my eyes. Once, I even cried out loud enough to wake my parents. Lol. If you were wondering what was there to be afraid about, it wasn’t the dark. Instead, I felt that I’m lonely and being left behind by the whole world (at least the part where it was night time) when they were sleeping and I wasn't. These were the rare moments where I find dad's snoring comforting. It proved that he's still around even if I couldn't see him.

As I grew older, I still have difficulties falling asleep occasionally, due to reasons such as sleeping time being disrupted by last-minute-revision into late hours and apprehension due to exams or something important occurring the next morning. This time, it’s frustrating rather than scary. As I hear the clock ticking by (this sound becomes unreasonably and irritably clear at these moments), the tension begins to build up gradually. Thoughts such as “Shit, I’ll be lack of energy by morning and end up screwing whatever-which-will-occur-tomorrow” will fill my head and thus making falling asleep even harder.

From these past experiences, I began to learn some ways to ease these feelings of anxiety.
1) Strictly refrain from checking the clock every once in a while, cuz it does nothing but heighten your stress level.
2) Do deep breathing exercises and clear your mind (or you can try counting sheep. I’m too lazy for that)

Above two ways are the ones I use most frequently. If they still don’t work for me and if there’s nothing much important going on the next day, I start doing stuffs like below:

1) Indulge in reminiscence of sweet old times from primary school days or earlier, up till college days (I’ve got loads of sweet and funny memories. And yes, I’ll laugh out loud when I recall the funny moments and muffle my screams in pillow in the embarrassing parts. Lol)
2) Simply let my imagination run wild.
3) Or if I’m really that wide awake, get up and grab a book to read. Or write something.

These usually doesn’t have much effect in inducing sleep, but simply some sort of pastime to fill in those lonely hours. It just shows that I no longer want to pressure myself for something I couldn’t control.

The best time to get sleeping problems are days like today. In other words, during holiday. It doesn’t really matter since I can always sleep at anytime later, and I even feel quite good since I can breathe fresh morning air. (Usually I won’t wake up before 9am during holidays even with the alarm clock shrieking) I’d rather be insomniac now than other days. Thus, today is a good day. =D