I went to see Insomnia tonight with some friends. I enjoyed the movie overall, and I thought that Al Pacino did an excellent performance.

I can well relate. As many of you read several months ago, I had my own problems with insomnia. The weight of the world as pertaining to my unemployed situation and how I was going to pay my bills and what was going to happen next was definitely keeping me awake at night. I never got to the point where I was up for more than 2 days because my body just shut down at some point, but I did experience a couple of those 2 day stretches back to back.

It's an odd feeling being awake at 4AM when everyone around you is still asleep. The city takes on an odd quiet that you normally wouldn't associate with a bustling metropolis because, well, you've never seen it any other way. You almost feel like you can hear a truck motoring over a bridge 5 miles away because it's just that quiet, and sometimes you can. The lights are on but no one's around to see them, and it makes you wonder why the city doesn't shut down its lights to give the impression that it too is going to sleep for the night because seeing them just keeps you awake even longer. There's an uneasy loneliness that comes with the hour in that you want to pick up the phone and call someone because you suddenly need some kind of human contact, but you can't disturb anyone at that hour of the night. There's no solace in TV because all the stations have gone to paid programming, and you can't even turn it up too loud because your neighbors might hear. The radio DJ doesn't say much, he just plays the music he's been told to play because he knows that no one's listening anyways and he's probably in that numb state of mind where he's just doing his job. There's no one out there to turn to, there's nothing to help you bide the time until your body and mind finally can't take it anymore and release you into blissful slumber.

You desperately want to sleep. Your mind is fogged, your eyelids are heavy, but it never fails -- as soon as you finally think you're ready to fall asleep and you climb into bed, your mind jumps to warp speed as soon as your head hits that pillow. Either that, or you feel like the gears in your head are just spinning in neutral and the only thought running through your head is how much you wish you could get just a little sleep. Eventually, it catches up to you in your daylight hours, which is even worse because that's the time you really do need to think and be alert, but your mind just can't get it together because you're so tired, and the daylight and your natural circadian rhythm is keeping you awake even if you have the opportunity to sleep then. You start hearing things that aren't there, seeing things out of the corner of your eye that aren't there, you become irritable and hypersensitive. It's like your nerves have been exposed and everything is just being directly communicated to your brain, and you start to feel overloaded -- as if you want to just be put in a clean room that's dark and soundproofed with no one else there so you won't hear or see or feel or experience anything. All you can think about is your bed, but even that becomes an enemy when it doesn't deliver what you need from it, and the more you think about it, the crazier it makes you and the farther away you're able to get from sleeping.

The human body and mind are strange things, and we're only beginning to be able to understand some of the reactions we have. When it's thrown out of rhythm, it's something that can affect you to the core.