On Mosquitoes and Insomnia...

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Inability to sleep… insomnia is the glamorized name. like they took that hideous ordinary looking discomfort and gave it a make over… dressed it in a ball gown and suddenly gave it status, and made you feel like it's not so bad if you use its royal name. Glam bam wide awake… Lady insomnia is keeping you company.

I have no problem with staying up at night. I love it. I come alive at night… typical me is drifting off to sleep at 4am, fulfilled, happy and not frustrated at being up so late, because some times I even make myself stay up… sometimes I try to push myself, I’m up living as the queen of the night time till the sun comes out and when the hustle and bustle of activities for the day begins, that’s when I tuck in and just float over to a beautiful comatose… or semi-comatose because I hear when the phone rings at 8am or 9am, someone who’s had hours of hours of a good night sleep feeling its okay to call, and when I by reflex groggily answer the call that ends up being a total waste of time and an annoying interruption, they think aha ah… you’re still sleeping at this time? You’re enjoying oh… and in that sound, I hear an undertone of lazy lazy lazy… you’re so lazy. But I really don’t care, as long as I’m productive all through the night, then keep your thoughts and maybe your calls to yourself, at least give me till 10am. I love my beauty sleep….

But you see, it becomes a problem when you don’t feel like being creative at night, you’ve prayed and then its almost 2am and as you snuggle in, the artificial darkness collides with the natural… there’s a power cut, and the generator is faulty. So you figure… it rained, the weathers cool, you can sleep off... only to close your eyes and wham! The monsters of the night start marauding. They are tiny, but not tiny enough to ignore. Close to the ears they zoom past with an annoying buzz. I find myself slapping myself so hard it feels like I’m doing a self-flagellation on myself like those monks. I hit my ears really hard, it dinged, I thought I may have burst my eardrums. I figured something out about those little evil suckers… most times I slap a spot and aggressively scratch, they have bitten and are long long gone before I attack myself… and the moment I gently rub my hands on my shoulder or any part of my body sometimes, something sticky is felt… blimey, I just killed one and it was a fat one, fat on my blood, taking a lazy nap on my shoulders/body and I had no idea. You only feel their bite long after they’re gone, so stop with the self harm by slapping yourself so hard in the bid to kill them.

Now I can’t sleep. Nothing frustrates me as much as mosquitoes, i remember as a child doing the exact same thing, being frustrated and looking for them kill. I pray for the light to be restored, that would keep them away… I hate the idea of insecticides because it causes allergies for me, and I end up spending the night puffing on inhalers. I put on the torch on my ipod and launch a search for mosquitoes, I might as well fight a battle if they would keep me awake, I hunt them out and kill as many as I find, it gives me a satisfaction that I have fired my own ammunition against them, even though they burst to death with my own blood. My friend says if mosquitoes decide to do a pay back, I’d be in trouble, because they would all troop to my room for all their comrades I have killed. I’d be ready for them.

And so I am forced to stay awake, because the moment I close my eyes, those terrors are close to my ears. I asked God why He created those petite, little monsters… and I thought to myself, maybe they weren’t meant to torment us so, maybe they play a part in the environment, and maybe the fall of man that distorted the way things were to be, unleashed their senselessness to attack the ones who have dominion over them.

I stay on instagram, liking relevant and irrelevant pictures, I try to pray at the same time, I read FIN stories, and slap myself at intervals and cringe at the giant shadows the light from my phone makes of them. I try writing, but my laptop battery is almost out.

Its 5am and I really do want to sleep, but they haven’t retired for the night… its 7am, the light from outside trickles in, they fizzle out… its 8am, power is restored, I close my eyes to sleep… its 9am, my phone beeps with an important call that cannot be ignored, and that call forces me to shower and drive out, it takes me out of the house for about an hour. Its 12:15pm, I’m in bed, snuggled in to sleep, but I have my stay the path book by Bobbie Houston by my side, I have my laptop open writing this. I am sleepy, I am tired from my battle with the mosquitoes, I'm a bit grouchy... I may have snapped at my mum. I need to sleep, but here I am, insomnia being real to me. The craziness of sleeplessness.