According to medical experts, high levels of stress can effect, among other things, one’s sleeping habits. If a person is severely stressed out, the ability to get a restful night’s sleep becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible. Being someone who is currently under an incalculable amount of stress – I can tell you firsthand that stress most definitely effects sleep – considering the fact that I am writing this column at 1:29am.

Sleep has never come easy for me. Even in happier times of my life, I have always been someone who needed just a few hours of shut eye to be functional. But lately, I can’t sleep at all. Take last night for example. I came home from my friend Lisa’s house around 7:00pm and made myself a steak with grilled onions. After I finished eating it and cleaning up, which was around 8:30pm, I went to lie down in bed because I felt a little tired. After falling asleep, I woke up at 10:59pm – and did not fall back to sleep until 6:00am. For nearly eight hours, I tossed and turned, flipped through the channels, listened to soft music – and did anything else I could think of to simply try and get some sleep – all to no avail.

The reason for my lack of shut eye is simple. Once my eyes open and I am awoken from sleep, whether it be from a phone call, Beavis meowing, or the horn of a passing car – my mind instantly begins reminding me of all the things in my life that are stressing me out – and never stops. Like a neighbor’s blasting music that you do not want to hear but can’t shut off, my mind rattles off a list of each and every stressful issue I am dealing with – as if I need to remember – and keeps this up until it is either time for me to get up and go to work – or when I simply surrender and get up for the day.

I have had stressful situations in my life, but never to this magnitude. At this point in my life, I have reached a level of anxiety and drama that is turning me into a completely different person. Besides my sleeping habits, my eating habits, confidence and personality are all changing as well – and while that is tough to deal with in itself – it does not help that I have to deal with it on no sleep. But no matter what I do – my body and mind refuse to rest no matter how much I try.

Don’t think I have not tried to combat this problem. So far, Tylenol PM, Sleepytime tea, a glass of wine, a can of beer, a good cigar, calming music and boring movies have proven unsuccessful. Yes, I do get a few Zs each night, but only one or two hours spaced out over the entire evening. As I go throughout the day doing my usual duties, it is a wonder I can function. For example, this morning I went to my mother’s house and put together her computer desk, unpacked and installed her printer, and stapled a 50-foot phone cord along the base of her walls – all after staying up until 6:00am and only falling asleep until 8:30am when I woke up for the day.

I find it ironic that I am so physically and mentally exhausted and yet I cannot sleep to save my life. It has been so long since I have fallen asleep under my own power and slept through the night that if I had one wish right now, I would wish for just one restful night consisting of at least eight hours of sleep. But since I cannot wish for such things, I will simply pray for it instead…

…wide awake.