Insomnia...a cruel trick

I used to be a good sleeper. I mean once I had kids I was a light sleeper and if something woke me up in the middle of the night I would not be able to go back to sleep. But I remember once Doug saying that he wished he could fall asleep as easily as I did.
Now I may go several days with only 4-6 hours of sleep.
And I know exactly when that happened: September 11, 2001
We had just moved into our house on Sunblest Blvd a few months before. Mackenzie was not feeling well that Tuesday and she had stayed home from school. So I slept in a little that morning. When I woke up, the world had changed.

Someone said "Haven't you heard?" and I turned on the TV to see this. And this was played over and over and over again ALL day long and when I went to bed that night this is what I saw over and over and over again. All I could think about were the thousands of people and what had happened to them. I was horrified and I couldn't sleep.
From that moment on when I can't sleep it's because some picture or sentence or song lyric or part of a random conversation is playing over and over and over again in my mind. Things just keep repeating. It's as if that night, September 11, a part of my brain was unlocked and it has never been shut again. The repeating part of the brain.

Of course the last almost 5 years have given me plenty of images and thoughts that can be repeated. Add to that my fibromyalgia in which pain is likely to keep me awake some nights, pre-menopause in which hot flashes may keep me distracted, or me trying desperately to feed my shopping addiction by browsing eBay and saving things on my list because I can't buy anything and you've got the Perfect Storm for insomnia.

I don't mind the quiet and being able to watch whatever I want on TV and I admit that once I start to hear birds singing I start to get sleepy, but I would love one week of pure uninterrupted, non-drug induced, worry free sleep-until-I-wake-up sleep. I can't remember what that was like, can you?

But I'm pretty sure it's fabulous!!!

I hear the birds singing so it must be time to go try again...G'nite.