4am

It’s 4am and I’m awake. I’m awake a lot at 4am these days.

Is it my bladder, my hormones, my body digesting my dinner? (I knew that eating so late would have a bad effect.)

I could use this time as thinking time, but my thoughts are racing around and around – not so much in circles but in a series of zig zag patterns, so the thinking I’m doing is not particularly useful. (And why is The Cranberries song “Zombie” running around in my head?)

I try and get back to sleep but I can’t get comfortable. I lie on my back and I’m too hot. I kick off the covers but then I’m too cold. I lie on my side but then I get a dead arm. I lie on the other side and then I have two dead arms. I lie face down but this is twisting my spine, and at this time of year when I am continuously suffering from hayfever my nose blocks up and I can’t breathe. So I am back on my back again staring up at the ceiling and waiting for my two dead arms to regain circulation.

I think about getting up to do something productive – I could read, or write! But then I think about how tired and grumpy I will be today if I don’t get enough sleep so I try and meditate myself into sleep, but instead my mind spirals out from meditating and all I can think about is how I’m not sleeping and still I am playing that song “Zo-ohm-bie, zo-ohm-bie, zo-ohm-bie-bie-bie.”

Am I thinking of this song because I will feel like a zombie if I don’t get to sleep soon?

Maybe I should get up and fire up the computer and do some writing now because I have been mentally dictating text in my head and the meditating is just not working. (“It’s in your hea-ead, in your hea-ead…”)

Now it’s 5am.

5am!

The sun is coming up and it’s getting lighter. And the damn birds are waking up. There’s a bird on the roof making an annoying broo-hoo, broo-hoo noise. Broo-hoo. You can’t sleep? Broo-hoo.

“…with their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns…” They could bring their bombs and their guns and shoot that bird. Broo-hoo, broo-hoo. “The violence causes silence…” That would be nice if it meant shutting up that bird.

Now the sun is up and it’s 5.30am. I’ve drunk half a litre of water, been to the bathroom twice, and had plenty of time to regret that can of Diet-pepsi I had with my later dinner.

There’s no point in pretending any more. Time to get up and start the day with my thoughts still spinning around. “In your head, in your head, they’re still fighting…”