The document is a first-person account from the perspective of someone struggling with insomnia. Some key details: 1) The author has trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, often staying up until dawn watching TV shows or using their phone. Various sleep aids and remedies have not helped. 2) While they enjoy the solitary feeling of being awake late at night, they dislike how late they sleep in and the impact it has on their daily life and responsibilities. 3) The author reflects on how their life has changed - they used to be organized, ambitious and popular but are now unmotivated and behind in classes after a breakup derailed their plans for the future.

1. Miranda Bator
2/17/2015
Racing Thoughts
Buzz buzz…. Buzz buzz…. Buzz buzz…. “Oh, shit,” I muffled, wiping the half dried up drool
off of the corners of my mouth. I’m fucking late, again. This was getting to be a pretty bad habit.
One that has not been easy to kick. Staying up until 4:00 AM, sometimes even stretching into the
early hours of dawn, wasn’t even something in my control anymore. My circadian rhythm was
completely off balance. Maybe it’s because I always stay up watching re-runs of “That 70’s Show”
or opening every god damn app on my phone because I’m too fidgety to fall asleep. Yeah that
might be the problem.
But it’s not like I hadn’t tried to fix my insomnia. I tried staying awake for a full 24-hours
and re-setting my sleep schedule. Didn’t work. I tried taking melatonin, drinking milk, not drinking
caffeine after 4:00 PM, as the doctors recommend. Even drinking sleepy-time tea. Nothing eases
up the undesirable restless feeling every single night. I’ve even tried smoking a bowl or two before
laying down for the night. Not even that overwhelming relaxing sensation from the indica could
make my eyes close at a decent hour.
And the worst part about it isn’t that I stay up late. Sometimes I really do enjoy the feeling
that I’m one of the few people who are awake (other than those at work or getting ready to start
their day). But the people who, like me, are slowly and effortlessly ending their day, winding down
and waiting to see what the night will have in store for them. I enjoy the comfort of a small, restless
community of those who stay awake at night, lonely as ever, searching for some motive to rest
their eyes. Even if I do not know these other humans dealing with the same sleeplessness as me, I
know they are there. And that is enough. That’s what I enjoy about the insomniatic nights that

2. accompany me on a regular basis. What I don’t like is the mornings (or afternoons, I should say)
following me sleep.
Waking up has never been my strong suit, even as a young child. But my life has hit a point
where rolling out of bed before noon has not only been increasingly difficult, but usually
improbable. And that’s what I hate about being an insomniac. Starting my day when most other
people have been awake for nearly six hours. My mother, for example, is typically just waking up
around the time I am beginning to feel heavy-eyed. By the time I am awake, my mother has run
six miles, showered and put on her glowing face of foundation and mascara, blow dried her hair
and gotten dressed for work, made coffee, breakfast, and lunch for both her and my father, prepared
for dinner in the evening, set off to work, dealt with patients for nearly four hours and eaten lunch.
My day is nearly over, she most likely thinks. And here I am, rolling out of bed, typically already
missed class or an appointment. Just like the irresponsible “adult” I am.
By this time, I don’t even have time to go for a run, like I used to. I have barely enough
time to brush my teeth, maybe go pee, and occasionally get dressed into something other than
sweatpants. I’m late a lot, but I never used to be. I was always the first one in class, at a meeting,
or anywhere, really. As a matter of fact, I’m a completely different person than I used to be, in a
lot of ways. On my graduation day, I had three beautiful chords around my neck: a gold chord for
graduating with over a 3.50 GPA, a royal purple chord for a community service award, and a pearly
white chord for being in drumline in the marching band. As you can tell, I was a really popular
girl.
But it really didn’t matter that I didn’t have a lot of friends. I had my (then) boyfriend who
I was madly in love with. I spent every day with him, his family, or my family. Life was perfect
for me. Nothing could possibly get better. I truly believed that. We wanted to spend the rest of our

3. lives together and I knew that because he bought me a promise ring. Sure, it turned my finger green
but he tried really hard to pick one out of good quality. (He must have, right?) After all, we had
plans together. We had everything from our kids names being picked out (Damian for a boy, Lucy
for a girl) to which type of church we were to get married in (non-denominational since I am
Catholic and he is Lutheran). Life was blissful when we were together, it seemed. Nothing could
tear us apart.
Except there was something that tore us apart. I’m really not even sure to the day what that
was exactly. Maybe he was in love with someone else, maybe he had just been tired of me for a
long time as was good at hiding it, or maybe 45 minutes was just too long of a drive to come see
me after we went to college. All I know is when he decided it was over, I was nowhere damn near
ready to move on. But he was, which meant I had to be ready. When three years of your life, a life
you had been assuming would be unchangeable, are snatched away from you, there’s not much
you can do to make the moving on process any better.
I started missing class a lot, something that was completely unthinkable for someone with
my personality traits. I was always the best in the class. The most trustworthy in my friend group.
The top at work. Not to sound cocky, but I was kind of the shit. Not in a pretentious type of way,
but just that I had my shit together. I was going to be a doctor and knew exactly how my life was
going to play out. I would graduate from my university in four years with honors, on the Dean’s
list, with an exceptional résumé of volunteer work, research, and job shadowing. I would go to
University of Michigan Medical School, complete my residency, and start my own practice for
obstetrician/ gynecology. I would start a family and be happily married to Dylan, living on a lake.
Being a chef, he would cook for the family every night while I brought home a majority of the
family earnings.

4. But that’s not what was in store anymore. I decided I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore.
Hell, I had no clue what I even wanted to do anymore. My goal making skills, which had brought
me so far in my life, were gone. I was an artist staring at a blank canvas that was my life with zero
inspiration. Just one, ratty old paintbrush and some dried out paints. And I was too mentally
exhausted to go out and buy some new, fresh acrylics.