For as long as I can remember, I have had a hard time falling asleep and remaining asleep. Last night, for example, I finally fell asleep around four in the morning. It wasn’t too troubling, minus the fact that I woke up at nine absolutely unable to fall asleep again. For the rest of the day, I will walk around in a bit of a blur until I end up napping on a friend’s bed for an hour’s rest that feels like twenty minutes.

It seems like the bags under my eyes are just a part of my appearance as my curly hair is. The feeling of fatigue is more of a personality trait than something that the average person can fix without hours of a feeble attempt.

Most would say that coffee or sleeping pills are the solutions to my problems. But I’ve given up coffee cold turkey. The last time I drank it, my hand wouldn’t stop jittering, and sleep wouldn’t come to me until four days later when I passed out more than I fell asleep.

The sleeping pills are another matter. Back in high school, I was tired of the sleepy feeling throughout the whole day. I popped my pills and I felt like I was going to die. The sheer exhaustion plus the pills forcibly dragged me into sleep instead of the lull that I hear about. Now I only reach my pills when I have something important the next day and I need my mind to work past its current ability.

I want to make it obvious that I’m not complaining. It’s just something that I wanted to talk out because not sleeping is getting worse during finals, where even the average joe can’t be lulled to sleep. It’s crazy, but even when I do sleep, I’m being plagued with dreams about portfolios and finals that I’m doomed to fail.

In one particular dream, I forgot an element in my Comp portfolio that I’ve never seen before and I was failed on the spot. I woke up jittery and confused until I realized that my portfolio was next to me with a checklist that I double and tripled checked until it was physically impossible that I missed something.

At least I can look forward to my time at home when I can rest without interruption of classes or essays with impending due dates. I can hardly wait for it.