I woke up at 2:30 am. Came upstairs to find my husband sleeping on the couch in front of the TV, woke him up and went back to bed. Problem is, it is now 4:30 am and I haven’t been able to fall asleep. I tossed and turned and just couldn’t find my slumber again. Eventually, I succumbed to the chatter in my brain and turned on my phone. Thinking if I read some posts on Facebook, I’d get tired and fall asleep again. That didn’t work. I remembered reading a few weeks ago, that it takes your body about 14 minutes to fall asleep and waited for this to happen. When it didn’t, I prayed and said “Ok God, is there something you want me to know? Is that the reason why I’m awake and can’t go back to sleep?” I silenced my brain (it only worked for like 2 nanoseconds) and tried to listen…nothing.
I started thinking about a lot of crap. My childhood. Thoughts of times my heart had been broken, thoughts of racism and apartheid, thoughts of war in countries like Syria and little children dying…the thoughts were endless and sounded like a farmers market, buzzing with life. I lay listening to my husband breathing, obviously deep asleep and felt a bit of envy and also a tad bit irritated. He was sleeping when I should be too. If it weren’t for him not being in the bed next to me, I wouldn’t have woken up (For some weird reason I sleep better with him in the bed next to me).
Then I remembered my cousin, Joshua, telling me “You need to write if you can’t sleep”. So…here I am, 4:38 am, sitting in the kitchen, hot cup of milk next to me (hoping it’ll help me sleep again) and writing this post.
The human brain…it baffles me. I listened to a speaker once, Robin Banks, giving a talk on MindPower. I remember him saying that we need to learn to control our brains…I’ll tell you what, it’s the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It’s like a stubborn horse that never allows you to break it in…untamable (At least mine is). I wish it had an off switch and most times even a reset switch – restore to factory settings. Now there’s a thought…
Some things I would love to hold dear to me until the day I die and never forget, feelings, special moments, etc. Other things (the things I remember most), I would much rather just nuke and get rid of any trace. These are the things, which bother me and keep me awake most nights. Are they really important? Why does our brain keep such crap alive? Is it really something you can turn off and eventually eradicate from your memory? If there’s a way, I would be front and centre, sitting and listening to every trick in the book to apply.
The one blessing about waking up this early is that it’s a public holiday and I don’t have to be up for work in 2 hours.
Now just to decide, do I go back downstairs to bed and toss and turn some more, or do I turn on the telly or find a movie on Netflix and hopefully pass out on the couch myself. Maybe that would bring this episode full circle since that’s where I found my husband before waking him up. Let see…
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