In my more hopeful days, I tried to develop a support group for insomniacs. I started with my own friend group, people I already knew and spent time talking about our sleepless nights with. One friend said she didn’t want to “have a place to go when she couldn’t sleep”, that she wouldn’t mind talking with me when those nights were horrendous, but she definitely would not want to speak to a whole group about it, especially people she didn’t know. It made sense but I didn’t tell her that. I wanted an audience. If the horrors in our lives are not for performance purposes, then they’re not worth having. Unfortunately, most insomniacs don’t want support, they just want some sleep.

I asked other people, “Do you have difficulty with sleep? Do you often feel alone in the world when you wake up in the middle of the night and have no one to talk to?” Even if you’ve got someone, they’re asleep, and you don’t want to wake them even though many nights I’ve stared and stared at my partner, somehow hoping my gaze would wake him up magically just so I would have someone to chat with, to spend time with so I wouldn’t feel like a completely creepy loner who can’t perform a basic human function that even babies can effortlessly execute?

I’m offering a safe space. A soft space, lined with fluffy blankets and velvet black out curtains.

I’m offering a cool club for uncool people that is only open while everyone else is asleep.

Another woman I asked to join said they’d think about it. They said they didn’t want to worry their family by joining a group that encouraged “her weirdness.”

A man said he was interested but as soon as I imagined having him in the group, I realized that he would become someone I “spent my nights with” and that made me rethink the invitation and, for a moment, the whole concept of the group to begin with.

I thought about who else I could ask and thought about some of my friends that were new parents, but that’s not quite the same as not sleeping when you have all the time, comfort, and allowances to do so (therein lies the true torture of insomnia). Besides, new parents aren’t alone when they wake up, they’re with their children (a purpose).

We true insomniacs have no control over our being awake at 4:14 AM on a Wednesday night. People talk about the places they’ve fallen asleep like planes, couches, even restaurants, and I talk about places I can’t fall asleep in even when I try, even when I take prescription drugs to help me sleep, often suffering the side effects (one of which is, you guessed it: sleeplessness). New parents, when encountering insomniacs, might think, “What a waste” or “That person’s nuts!” or “I wonder if they’d be interested in midnight shift babysitting so I could get some sleep.” Because it is a waste. It's a waste of sleep time and a waste of adventure time because if you’re going to be awake does it even count as consciousness if all you’re doing is rolling around trying to fall asleep? No, it doesn’t count. It doesn’t anything.

Another person I asked was a friend of a friend. When I started telling them about the group and shared some of my own struggles with being awake at night for no reason, they asked, “How do you know if it’s for no reason? Maybe you’re protecting the world from evil forces that are attempting to take over while everyone is sleeping?” Maybe.

Maybe.

The last person I asked before I considered giving up was someone I used to be very close to but hadn’t spoken with in years. She was now living in California and replied back saying that giving up her brain was the best decision of her life, that ever since she decided to stop thinking so much she’s been a lot happier. Only recently has she started waking up in the middle of the night like she used to with unending thoughts. “It’s a real drag, thinking. I don’t miss it.” When I asked her how she stopped thinking she told me she hadn’t meant to do it on purpose but that after her first kid and the move to LA, that it just sort of happened “the way these things usually do.”

By this point, I began to think that being alone and awake every night was probably for the best. I wouldn’t be disturbing anyone else and maybe this is the sort of private thing we all need to deal with on our own. Still, something about that sounds… boring. Dull. Tired.

Better to suffer with someone.

That way, at least, your misery can be used as humor, to tell stories, laugh, feel some… connection. Otherwise, everything and anything that occurs in those quiet hours–our thoughts, our ideas, our feelings on fantasy–are just moments lost in the dark, forever.