Hello darkness my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
With the sound of silence
One of the under-appreciated benefits of living a development expat life is that many quirky, odd or otherwise willfully neglectful appearances of inattentiveness in social or professional circles can very often be explained away by an airy wave of the hand while sighing the following: "I'm jetlagged.". As in, "oh my, I've just flown in from Nairobi and I'm just wrecked...that layover in Dubai really did it for me when I landed there at 1am" or, "Even though I just love being based in Bangkok, that 15 hour transpacific flight to Atlanta --via Seoul --is just killer." Yeah yeah, it's great to be back in HQ but sorry folks I may just need to reschedule this meeting once my body no longer thinks I'm in [insert latest emergency location.]. In case anyone reading this is feeling a bit defensive, please know that those examples are all things I have said in my life. And probably not just once. When you are off saving humanity and gathering up even more heroic stories to tell random folks about how it's all just so complicated and people "there" are so just courageous, etc one really has a great trump card to soothe away peoples' concerns that you may just not be optimizing your emotional intelligence. I mean, someone will surely rush off to get you another strong cup of fair trade, sustainably grown and appropriately harvested dry roasted organic coffee. Added milk is for wimps. Now, what was I writing about? I may have dozed off a moment.
Cue forward out of that global roaming lifestyle and instead to an established process of re acclimation back home and what do you have? No excuses really, to explain why it's difficult to sleep at night sometimes. No internal disruptions of body clocks wondering why it's light out when you feel asleep on the inside. No automatic digestion going on without it being anywhere near a meal time. No appreciation of waking up with a nice big stretch on a fluffy pillow while rolling over with the confidence of a solid comfortable REM experience. Oh sure, maybe a bit of jet lag here and there for a couple of hours' time zones or a big blowout summer trip...yada yada yada. But for anyone looking to step off the global international development roaming road, understand that saying goodbye to chronic jet lag can mean saying hello to that friend in the dark: insomnia.
Ah, insomnia. Even the name sounds upsetting. I bet if you would ask innocent little kids on the street if insomnia was a good or bad thing, most would know just by the sound of the word that insomnia is generally not appreciated. That it's unwelcome. That's it's a cause of much eye rolling, tossing and turning and because it's the US, it's also a great reason to produce a full range of non habit forming but apparently very effective sleep aids.
 |
| You are getting very sleepy. |
Blogs and other writings often tell of the happy, cheerful kodak moments in life. Love those! And I'm also at the moment, trying to inject my writings with more personal authenticity and wholeness --which in my case then means sharing that insomnia has for the past few months, been a good friend to me. This is a new friendship in my life, and one that I am working out how to engage with. The first hurdle has been to release the idea that I AM UNIQUE IN EXPERIENCING INSOMNIA. Turns out, I'm not as special as I thought. More than half of all adults routinely experience occasional bouts of insomnia due to stress, anxiety, exercising too late at night, overeating, over drinking, over living and over thinking. That last one is my nemesis: over thinking. The thing at night for me, is that most sentences start with "what if..." and spin off into a scary, more uncertain place. It's not the "what if I have every dream come true? what if I'm so happy with everything in my life that I can't take it? What if I'm so successful in every aspect of my life that I just don't know what to do with myself?" No no, dear reader. It's the spooked little gremlins that irrationally ask "What if all my happiest/most successful/sexiest/funniest/most loving moments are behind me? What if I never get in the physical health I want to achieve? What if I never finish writing those chapters?" and most worrisome of all in the middle of the night...
WHAT IF I NEVER FALL BACK TO SLEEP, NEVER EVER EVER?
Fed up with the "what if " machine --and with thinking about buying yet another under eye concealer -- I decided to re-wire my relationship to insomnia. And it was fittingly about 2:27am when this happened and I was staring out the window. I was the only person awake in the world, of that I was sure. I asked --to no one in particular but with undoubtedly profound insight- "what if insomnia is a good thing?" and set about finding approaches that embrace insomnia. That embrace the darkness. That embrace the silence. That validated my stubborn belief that it's not me, it's some kind of misunderstanding between myself and life. And off I went, to get my PhD in Google surfing. Of course, there is a ton of stuff out there and most comforting to me was selecting content that explained how in some indigenous cultures in America, insomnia is considered a gift (why is it always those "indigenous cultures" that seem to know this stuff better than anyone else?!?!) That the velvety darkness of deep night is considered a sacred time. That insomnia is a time when spirits wake up and visit the people lucky enough to be awake to receive their messages. That in effect, those who experience insomnia may possess some sort of intergalactic ability to commune with the spirits. That in the end, insomnia is a process by which those more spiritually open can tap into subliminal messages from the night fairies who are busy sprinkling their magic message dust.
What a relief to know it's not that I'm over-analytical, neurotic, obsessive and/or a worrying nitwit who just needs to get her priorities in order and stop fretting about life! It's America, damn it! Pull yourself together. I get it now. It's not the 3pm latte or the gluten bread. I'm actually somewhat telepathic and speak a spirit language with little sprites I can't see. Can you feel my relief through these writings?
Joking aside, this re-wiring of my relationship to insomnia created a predictable twist: as soon as I started feeling less stressed about what my insomnia meant and instead saw it as connecting more deeply with my own authenticity - my worries, dreams, desires and concerns --I started sleeping better. You saw that coming, I'm sure.
Am I missing my insomnia? Not really. I'm sure I'll chat with my night fairies sooner than later.
