By Melina Filippidou

Lost Dreams

It’s been a while since the last time I had a proper sleep.  I don’t know about you but I need at the very least 7 hours of sleep to recharge my batteries, otherwise I wake up feeling like the whole world hates me and it’s mutual and my body and brain are in denial for the biggest part of the day. But although you can force yourself to get off the bed, you can’t force it to fall asleep.  Despite being tired and desperate for sleep, every night finds me fighting with the covers and obsessively rearranging the pillow as if the cause of my insomnia is somewhere in between the layers.  And when eventually I find some peace, my alarm clock starts ringing and I swear it sounds like the meanest laugh of the meanest Joker in the worst Batman movie ever (which is probably the 2017 Justice League ).

There’s a dead period for me around 6-7 in the evening for about 1 or 2 hours.  It’s the time I leave school and go home, usually pretty exhausted.  Although going straight to bed seems ideal, I know that I can’t sleep because it’s too early and I have a lot of work to do, which I don’t because my brain is fried. So it messes up my day because I start working quite late and when I finish off my body feels kind of cheated and confused. So when I get in bed and turn off the lights, my body’s like “oh now you want to sleep? Yeah we’ll see” and the war begins. I could ask my friends and family for advice but I already know exactly what they’d say.

My beloved grandpa would recommend me to count sheep, my mom would suggest a warm cup of milk, my friends would go for meditation, my real friends would go for masturbation and Google would be the obnoxious smart ass it’s always been by giving me 19+1 ways to beat insomnia. I’ve tried them all and a couple more, do not work.  Because I know that my sleep has been kidnapped by anxiety, stress and ambition. So if I find a way to keep my nights anxiety-free and let my mind breathe things will go back to normal, but until then unfortunately there are not enough sheep in the planet and milk just reminds me of coffee.

I probably have to face sleeping as a task, take it seriously and practice a lot. Despite the peaceful cover, sleeping is an intense activity because it requires full commitment.  Of course, like any other activity, all the practice and commitment in the world won’t help if don’t you love what you’re doing. I really, really love sleeping and I used to be sincerely good at it. I hope that soon enough I’ll get my old self back and master sleeping again.