Day: October 8, 2009

Five years ago, for about two weeks, I woke up at 3:00am and could not go back to sleep.  My mom told me I had terminal insomnia, and I was like, “Oh my god!  It’s FATAL?!”  And she said, no, terminal as in ‘end’, like the end of my sleep was disrupted.  Whew.

The good part was it went away.  It came back any time I had a big stressor in my life—moving, changing jobs, family stuff—but it was always temporary.  Now I’m going on four months of pretty consistent 3:00am wake-ups.  I’m pretty cranky about it too.  It’s hard to teach 30 nine-year-olds reading, writing, math, science, and social studies on five hours of sleep a night.

The shitty part is that I’m still so tired when I wake up.  My eyes refuse to stay open, but when I close them, my mind burns a big, fluorescent sign that says OPEN FOR BUSINESS.