Cogito ergo sum

I really don't know how to begin this blog post, so I'll just plunge right on in. I'm feeling a whole raft of emotions right now, including extreme tiredness, due to a bout of insomnia last night. I haven't been sleeping well at all lately, and it's starting to take it's toll as I'm going to bed expecting not to be able to sleep well and therefore, what do you know, I end up in one of those self fulfilling prophecy type situations where my fear becomes my reality. Ever since I was about 17 I've had varying degrees of insomnia for both short and long periods of time. I know that it is mainly caused by anxiety and depression - and that it tends to strike when I am going through periods of stress in my life. Of course, this is no great revelation in itself, merely a problem that I am trying to get to the bottom of. Why am I stressed? what do I have in my life that is causing me stress? why do I feel so anxious all the time?

On the home front things are good - Tim is fantastic and very supportive. I think it has more to do with work and with other situations that I feel are out of my control.

Work. Work, work, work. I have such mixed feelings about work. Lately I've begun to feel very weary of work. I'm finding it to be one of those jobs that you simply cannot stop thinking about. I feel as though it is always with me wherever I go, or whatever I happen to be doing. For instance, I find myself engaging in some form of pleasurable activity, and suddenly I'll realise that for the past five minutes I haven't been present in what I'm doing at all, but trapped in my head thinking about the next day at work, or something someone said or did that day. It's always there, lurking in the back of my mind. I wish I knew better strategies for simply being able to forget about it, and I wish that I was able to sleep easier. Insomnia is the dark country that I feel I know all too well. It is a landscape that I navigate alone.

The other night when I couldn't sleep I got up and stood in front of the window, gazing out at the stars, bathed in the dim glow of the full moon. I felt so alone, as though I was the only person awake (or even existing) in that point of time. I reached my hand out, tracing my fingertips down the glass, feeling the darkness being kept at bay. It was as though the glass were a barrier separating me from the rest of the world. I cannot exist within it, I can only watch and yearn for it, just as I yearn to move past this and stop living in my head and start living.