My little death.

In the science fiction masterpiece "Dune" by Frank Herbert introduced the world to the Bene Gesserit.  They said that fear was the "little death".  To have fear was okay but to let it control you was a type of death.  I'm okay with fear, it's my lack of sleep that kills me.

There are basically two types of insomnia, can't fall asleep and can't stay asleep.  I suffer from both.  Sleeping is the easiest thing in the world.  Babies do it, I think some cats sleep around 23 hours a day.  I have difficulty getting six.  The story of my life.

No one in my family has ever had problems sleeping so they never understood me.  My parents would tell me to try harder.  Trying harder doesn't work in case you didn't know.  That's when I started learning about biofeedback.  Twentysomething years later and I can normally get to sleep within half an hour.  Give me a few minutes and I can lower my blood pressure a fair amount.

I've done various meds to get to sleep.  I would do Claritin until I built up a tolerance and then I would go to Benadryl or something else.  Then I found valerian root.  Smells like an illegal trash dump in New Jersey in the middle of summer but it helps you get to sleep.

It is so annoying when you can't get to sleep, you try all of the tricks you know and even take your sleeping pills and you still can't get to sleep.  That was last night.  I'm wondering what tonight holds for me.