Hey, Just Clear Your Mind.

For an insomniac, waiting for sleep is like waiting for water to boil. And like they say, a watched pot never boils. Right? So a moderately sleepy, impatient person waiting for rest will never sleep? I suppose so because I fall victim to this every night.

I've been on a six year quest for a remedy to my sleeping difficulty...to no avail. I've been given several suggestions that have almost worked. At least occasionally. Or I still end up awake at 4AM, then realizing that I have to be awake in a few hours, then becoming either more hyped up or extremely ill.

One person told me to turn my clock around. If you check the time, it'll make you more anxious about needing to sleep now...because the more time you spend freaking out, the less time you'll have to sleep.

Other people generally tell me, "Just clear your mind. Then sleep will come." Or "Just relax." And for future reference, I am practically incapable of relaxation.

Not long ago, I had a realization. I was laying in bed one night, and I became captivated by the idea of trying to clear one's mind. By trying not to think, aren't you thinking of not thinking?...In turn thinking? Does this make sense to anyone but me?

Ir will always baffle me, I'm sure. I'll lay there, desperately craving sleep, but the thoughts keep coming. Then I will myself not to think. I calmly tell myself, "Stop thinking. STOP IT." I begin to lose my cool quickly when words and images keep on dancing despite my distinct order to knock it off.

Then I try...
"Think of a blank sheet of paper, that ought to help." Twenty seconds later, I'm filling the imaginary blank sheet of paper with words and doodles of extinct dinosaurs and creatures with flashing smiles. So I attempt another tactic.

"Don't think don't think don't think stop it think of nothing. Nothingness is what you are trying to imagine. Blank, empty space...black, dark space...Or is emptiness white and glowing? I mean, really, Liz...If you were falling into big pit of nothing, would it be black or white? Ugh, I'm thinking again...But now that I've started, I need to see this one through..."

It's an endless cycle, let me tell you.

I had a conversation with someone that went like this:
Him: "It's like moving. It takes effort to move, but it doesn't take effort to not move. So it would take effort to not sleep, right?"
Me: "You don't know me very well. It takes effort for me not to move."

As a side note: I said this while squirming around, unintentionally proving my point. I then laughed at myself, given the irony.

I actually have to expend more effort trying not to move than I do to flail my arms about. It takes more conscious thought to clear my mind than it does to let my thoughts run rampant. So, I'm back to the beginning. How is one supposed to think about not thinking? Enlighten me.

Unless I can find the cure for sleeplessness or the inability to clear my mind, I will eventually explode into twelve thousand pieces. That leaves someone else with the responsibility of picking up my remains....and no one wants to see a person in that many pieces. Am I right, or am I right?