Night time can be a very lonely place when you are unable to sleep. Worries and concerns are exaggerated and there is little to do to distract you from the fears and frustrations that plague you in the wee small hours. The tiniest thing can become a burden and on some nights a myriad of negative thoughts  take over my head and prevent the onset of restful sleep. Usually I take a sleeping tablet which provides eight hours of much needed oblivion but I don’t always remember and by the time I do, it’s too late. Instead  I am faced with having  to fight my low mood and bubbling emotions without help and I have often fought a thousand battles before I get up for work the following morning.

I’m sure that the long-term answer to my depression is not anti-depressant medication. Likewise the cure for my insomnia is not sleeping tablets but there is only so much I can do to exhaust myself in the vain  hope that fatigue will take over and render me unconscious for a welcome rest before the utterly numbing resulting tiredness impacts on everything I do. Grumpy, tearful, hostile and irritable. Argumentative, despairing and emotionally demanding. All side effects of the lack of sleep and unpleasant ones for all concerned.

For now I will keep taking the tablets. As for the future, who knows. But I am determined to put things right so that when one day I finally put my head on my pillow I will drift off into a peaceful self-content sleep of the unburdened.