You know that part in Fight Club when Edward Norton's character says "When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep, and you're never really awake"?

The first time I saw the movie I was 20 years old, and that line made me jump up in my seat. I had never heard a more accurate description of what I've been going through for as long as I could remember.

When most infants first pop out of the womb, after crying and freaking out that they're out in the world for the first time in nine months, they usually go right to sleep. Not me. According to my mother, I was born at 14 minutes to midnight and spent my entire first night of life awake and staring at everything around the room.

Despite reading, taking sleep supplements, taking sleeping pills, watching Netflix, and basically partaking in every other sleep-inducing trick you can think of since I was in kindergarten, the seemingly simple task of going to sleep has been next to impossible my whole life.

One of my first memories is climbing into my parents' bed one night when I was three years old because it was late and I was bored, and I stayed awake sitting in between them in their bed all night, happily looking at picture books while they slept until it was time for them to wake up and take me to preschool. They asked me when I went to bed, and I answered that I never did.

There were countless nights in high school I would get in bed around one or two in the morning, fully intending on going to sleep, and then suddenly it would be 6:30 a.m. so I would just wake up and get ready for school.

In college, I was always half an hour late for my 11 a.m. class because I frequently wouldn't be able to sleep until eight or nine in the morning.

Now, I'm 25 and have been working for a hostel in Barcelona, Spain, frequently as the nighttime receptionist because I'll be awake anyway. Almost every morning I come downstairs at 9:30 a.m. to take advantage of the free breakfast, and talk to various guests about their plans for the day to see La Sagrada Familia or go for a morning run, when I haven't even gone to sleep yet.

Like the quote says, insomnia makes the time of day completely meaningless. You don't notice when it starts being nighttime. You don't remember if something you think you did yesterday actually happened today or if it was last week.

Obviously by now, I'm used to it, but sometimes, when I have to wake up for an early shift and I've been in bed for eight hours waiting for sleep to come, I really wish I could just shut my eyes and pass out like most "normal" people do.

If you typically sleep a normally-timed eight hours every night, cherish it, and if you've got insomnia, you're not alone.