It's been three weeks.

Three weeks ago, my body suddenly decided it was having problems falling asleep. I'd lay awake for hours, watching the room get progressively bluer. There was no reason to really want to get to sleep early as I'm unemployed. But that didn't make it suck any less.

Used to sleeping a solid ten hours (as recommended by my physician), I was suddenly pulling four--less if I slept sporatically. I'd wake up completely dead, everything about ten feet away from me. Like I was in some foggy dream state--wait, was I really dreaming?

Over the three weeks, I tried every method known to man, and some the government doesn't want you to know. Tried and true methods, ones that have worked for me countless times left me feeling a little silly but still wide-awake.

On a trip to Wal-Mart, I decided, You know what? Enough is enough!. Yep, I bit that god-awful bullet and went to the pharmacy section for some sleeping meds.

Damn Wal-Mart who has everything failed to carry this. At least, I don't think. The organization of that section was the most convoluted thing, I honestly think some vindictive monkey thought it up. After answering a sphinx's riddle and knocking Voldemort down a few pegs, I came across the cold medicine section. I shoved past the meth chemists and looked at my options. Damn. I had my choice of Nyquil--liquid or FUCKANTIC pills or . . . that was it. Every damn thing else was non-drowsy. It boasted so on each box like Hades was sticking his thumbs in his ears and going 'Na-na-naaaah'.

In the end, I got the NyQuil--the horse pills. It gave me sick nights to get my body back on it's original timer.

So each night I took the pills, feeling them work their ways through my two intestinal sets. It was like swallowing a whole ear of corn. Nevertheless, the drugs kicked in and lulled me into a deep and groggy sleep. For the first time since the insomnia started, I remembered my dream. For the first time in my life, I wished I hadn't. I won't go into details but it involved shopping and the hippopotamus. That's all I'll say.

Each morning, I woke up on my lonesome and walked out. Even though the medicine had since worn off, my brain continued to swim sluggishly through a thick-ass milk shake.

My daily six-hour bouts of novel-writing were halted as I felt too scatter-brained to focus on the story. Even though it was all in my brain, my characters and their surroundings were all like friends who suddenly refused to answer their phones. Groggy as hell and completely alone, I somehow crawled through each day.

Six days were up and I decided to try sleeping without.

No go. For about three days, I continued on the same hellish route of sleeping less than half of what I was used to. I was getting moody, too, not sure whether I wanted to choke my boyfriend or burst into tears. Normally, I would do neither of these things and felt entirely ashamed of it. Any other time I had insomnia (and there's been many), I dealt with it on my own, letting no one see what I was going through. And why should I? It wasn't their problem!

But this one insisted on knowing. I told him and he told me, if need be, he'd go to the doctor and feign insomnia to get some sleeping pills (I have no insurance and thus, no monies to get something prescribed). I wanted to save that as a last resort.

Instead, I went to my neighbourhood grocery store which had a helpful smile in every aisle that I wanted to rid myself of. There, in all it's glory and simply found, was some straight sleeping pills. Delightfully, they were roughly the size of my pinky nail.

Also, when I took one, I fell asleep rather quickly. And, when I awoke, I didn't feel retardedly dead. In fact, I managed to get something done. What it was, I don't know but I distinctly recall feeling accomplished. For some reason, I recall chopsticks. Though we don't own any.

Next night, however, I found myself lying awake watching that damn sun rise from between the heavy dark curtains. It was like some big dumb kid poking at a sleeping kitten. Also, something new, I had problems taking deep breaths. My jaw hurt from so many forced yawns that I wondered if in the future, I'd be able to dislocate it like a snake and eat a whole turkey at once. At least the triptophan might knock me out. I gave up and went to take a second tiny pill. Soon, I fell asleep but woke up six hours later.

Next night I took two at once halfway through an episode of Battlestar Galactica. Once it was over, I looked, felt, and sounded high. As I've never been high, this is only an approximation. But from what I see, the higher of the highs tend to be a bit out of it, mumble a lot. There also seemed to be particularly dense air pockets littering the floor of my apartment all of a sudden. Almost immediately, I fell into a deep, dead, sleep.

And slept for a good ten hours--aaahh it felt good to be back. When I awoke, I was completely refreshed and ready to do--nothing. Because it was four in the afternoon. So--this was yesterday--I went to Cracked.com and read ever list they had on there. Good entertainment as is v. funny.

Now I felt too wired to focus on my writing and even forgot to log onto Yahoo!IM as I have almost every day for over a year and a half. (Sorry, Melissa). Last night, I took two more pills but lay awake for a good four hours before almost forcing myself to sleep.

I was awoken a bit early to go to a wedding. Now running on half a tank, I had to do a number of things about as familiar to me as de-arming a bomb--I had to put on make-up and do my hair. Always a firm believer that if the gods wanted women to smear goop on their faces, they'd have made it automatically shoot out of our veins. Make-up Girl, Make-up Girl, doesn't need Rimmel anymore . . .

Anyway, with surprisingly stead hands, I managed not to gouge my eyes out with instruments and items too sharp to be so close to an eye and even didn't burn myself with my possessed flat iron. The pomade under my nails was only mildly distracting as I pulled it through bits of layers of my hair - to achieve the just-woken effect. Yep, all that work to look like I just woke up.

Here I sit, about to go to the reception and wanting instead to sleep. Well, maybe the alcohol will help.