insomnia

I haven't gotten more than 4 hours of sleep since Friday night, when I slept barely 6 hours. I go through this every few months, when for some unknown reason my body decides it doesn't really need sleep, and does whatever it can to prevent me from getting some. Or maybe it's my mind doing it, I don't really know.

What I do know, is this: a) I'm exhausted, and b) I cannot get to sleep for the life of me.

Today I actually started getting physical symptoms of extreme stress/fatigue: my heart keeps feeling like it's going to jump out of my chest, it's beating so hard. Not fast, I counted and my pulse was right on, but it's just beating harder than normal. I actually looked up the number of a doctor to see about getting an appointment earlier today because this heart-thing was worrying me a bit. But then I read about insomnia and one of the "side effects" of not sleeping is this heart-stuff that I've been having (also felt like I was having trouble catching my breath at times, also part of this heart-beating-abnormally-thing).

Basically, my body is saying "Hey! I'm stressing out here!" It's my body, knowing that it hasn't slept much, doing what it needs to to make sure I'm still alert during the day (part of our fight-or-flight instincts).

I wish I could just sleep.