I discover myself spending my nights at Starbucks correlating other insomniacs’ lifestyles to mine: how they look, how they dress, what they study, even what drinks they order, or sitting at the security front desk at UGL checking the IDs of “seasonal” insomniacs as they only lurk the nights only around the season of finals.  I pity the torturous adversity that I see in their eyes as each student walks in showing their IDs with wondering eyes.  Fatigue can do this to your body; you start to lose control of usual voluntary functions: eyes looking at nothing but space while talking to someone, trembling hands vibrating like a slug which has been poured with salt, and occasional shrugs of the shoulders.  Sharing the common insomniatic disease, I still feel these night owls around me don’t quite understand how it all works.  The complex systems of how my brain works goes beyond their understanding of adequate sleeping.  Some call it genetics, others call it environmental influences: light, noise, the people and activities around you, some condemn it on adaptive behaviors: depression… stress.  For me it’s all of these factors combined, in a strange, manifested way.  But what makes me different from the “others” is that I don’t undertake the effort to repair myself from the syndrome of insomnia… I fight it until my body can gain no possession of itself… and then, after every single muscle falls to the victorious defeat of sleep, I wake up and avenge it some more.

Waking up from short naps from which usually my body chooses to take and not me, this lack of triumph covets my mind like the feeling of waking up dreaming of a punishing suffocation; no control, helpless, disabled and struggling for air.  The feeling of helplessness usually brings a feeling of grief in me darning the same stages as if one would have when he first found out of developing cancer: first... denial… then anger… bargaining and repenting… depression… and last ... acceptance.  I guess, lately, I’ve learn to accept all of this.

sunrise...