#4. When sleep declares war on you!

The rush of bright sunlight through the bedside window was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes that morning.The happy “yaayy it’s morning” chirping of the birds tickled my ears. Oh! Wait a second ..what was all the loud blasting music that I hear now? The new alarm tone of my roomie ! I took one looong look at her peaceful and content face .So blessed I was to get such a beautiful soul as my roomie .

I reached out for the the water bottle on her table and took a sip ..you know ‘coz water is good for your body and poured the rest of it on her face! How dare she sleep so well through this cacophony ! How dare she leave the curtains of my window open ! How dare she set her stupid alarm knowing pretty well that the legend who can invent an alarm that can wake her up has not been born yet on this planet or any other planet as for that matter ! Such a bish..

By now you might have guessed . I’m not a morning person .But that’s not it. I wake up to every weeny noise and every lil stream of sunlight .U won’t get the intensity of my problem until I put it this way, if someone sleeping 8 rooms away from me snores,I wake up thinking there’s an earthquake with 7 point intensity on the Richter scale! (Well that was a wee bit exaggerated..it’s not that bad).There now I have created an image that I’m a grumpy old girl but I am telling you …this grumpy person takes over my personality very rarely ..like in 3 or 4 days a month lasting only up to 4 or 5 days at a time..that’s not much to put up with right!?

So as I was saying I am not a sound sleeper and that worries me like crazy. Its all good when you have an exam and must wake up at 4’0 clock in the morning. You know what! I do have some epic bragging rights.. I wake up at the second or third ring of my alarm whether it’s midnight or early morning.. Bet none of you can do that right??? Of course I am right.. In my 19 years of vaaaastt experience(😎😎) and deep intense research on sleeping habits of people, I have never met a single person who can beat me in a wake-up-to-every-single-rustle-of-leaf competition (pheww that was long). But then I wake up to not just mine but others alarm too. So five other roomies besides myself set alarm for five different hours and waking up five times in the four hours that you actually sleep is not at all a pleasant feeling.And what’s even worse (I used to think there’s literally nothing worse than waking up during a sound sleep but trust me I found something worse or more precisely it found me)…sleeping off during an exam! Can you just imagine the embarrassment when an exam invigilator shook me up from my sleep during our semester exam! And not to forget the sniggering of the kids around me..I was in a daze and everything was happening so slow but yea!the moment I saw the invigilator’s burning stare, everything came back to me and I took the question paper and started chewing the pen and did the infamous stare-into-the-ceiling thingy that every student is familiar with

So guys out there! If you know this feeling of total exasperation at not being able to sleep like a python(coz I know python sleeps a lot and how do I know it? I just Googled “sleepy animals”) then.. well there’s nothing we can do about it other than be jealous of those lucky sound sleepers! Once my bestie/roomie asked me to wake her up and after useless attempts ranging from shaking to shouting, I said I was gonna open her last packet of rainbow cookies in a soft mild tone and out of nowhere she sprang up shouting “give me back my cookies “! You can try that next time.. Works like magic!

My love for sleep can easily match our Joey Tribianny’s love for food and you know what. But I don’t think” SLEEP” realizes this at all because it ditches me all the time. I go to bed feeling insanely sleepy and everything’s good until the moment I close my eyes. Once I close my eyes the thought soldiers start the march past into my poor brain! Every conversation I had that day will be critically analysed.. What I actually said and what I should have said!! How I answered the teachers that day and how I should have answered! The fights and word wars I had! Infinite number of bright comebacks and smart back answers comes to me while I am on my bed but while the actual thing happened that day all I did was stare at my opponent, gaping like a goldfish without saying anything intelligent and looking like a total looser altogether! And then that nasty fall comes to you.. Aishh…i tripped right in front of those cute guys.. And they laughed! Cringe Cringe……….. So silly of me to not look at the floor while walking.. Another round of Cringe Cringe.. “Sleep.. I hate you.. I really do”

I used to be really scared of darkness and used to sleep with my parents till I was in 9th grade or so.. So embarrassing I know.. And even after I started sleeping alone, if I woke up in the middle of night, I would go to my parents room and sleep there. I actually thought this was the ultimate embarrassment until my friend told me her life story. She’s 19 years old and if she wake up in the middle of night, you know what she does? No.. she doesn’t go sleep in her parent’s room like me. She take her cell phone.. Call her mom who’s 3 steps away from her bedroom… Makes her mom come to her bedroom.. Tag along with her mom back.. And sleeps with her mom in her mom’s bedroom.. People like her make my life a whole lot easier.

So guys we can now safely conclude that you are not the only one worried about the lack of sleep. We have all been there. If the cause of your insomnia is a heartbreak or depression, then there’s nothing I can do about it. But if it’s the mild kind, then maybe a few sleep hacks I found useful can make a difference for you.

Sleep hacks to my explorers,

1. Adjust the room temperature :If your room is too warm, it may affect your sleep . So open the windows and invite the cool air in. If you have already tried that then try slipping into a lighter cotton dress!
2. Wash your feet with cold water :idk why but for some reason I have always found this very helpful!
3. Have a glass of milk
4. Google something interesting or a something short and sweet, tire your eyes and mind bit and you will fall off to sleep faster.
5. Okay this one might sound stupid but we all know it’s true “fake it till you make it” :That’s right fellow insomniacs, u gotta fake sleep till it comes to you

P. S. I really hope my blog didn’t make you fall asleep

Written by CHIRI