In life, everyone will likely experience sleepless nights at some point. Normally, when we feel sleepy, we can easily fall into bed and drift off to sleep without a second thought. The moment sleepiness arrives, our body naturally prepares for rest, and our desire to sleep is immediately satisfied. But sometimes, a sleepless night occurs.
After such a night, an overwhelming need for sleep will take over the next morning, leading to oversleeping, sleeping until afternoon, or even giving in and going to bed earlier than usual. Even if a sleepless night has passed, the need to sleep is always fulfilled the next day.
However, in the case of insomnia, that accumulated sleep desire is never satisfied. In fact, the feeling of desperately needing sleep fades, and the ability to feel sleepy disappears altogether. Even when you close your eyes, your mind remains restless, and your body cannot relax. Despite being completely exhausted, the sensation of sleep seems to be out of reach. Your mind is far from stillness, and rather, endless thoughts flood in, while your body stays tense and far from restful. No matter how much you lie down with your eyes closed, the wave of sleep never comes. Instead, you feel increasingly heavier and worse, as though the night could stretch on endlessly.
As a result, the next day, the fatigue is so overwhelming that you might wish, “If only I could pass out, it would be so much easier.” But with insomnia, you never even have the chance to “doze off.” Instead, you just suffer from worsening physical condition.
Moreover, even if the next day is a holiday, the time slips away without any sleep. While others enjoy the quiet of their day off, I am left accumulating fatigue, and end up wasting the entire day. Despite closing my eyes, sleep refuses to come, and my body never gets a chance to rest. Time just keeps passing. I spend my day lying in bed, doing nothing, and before I realize it, the precious hours of my day off are gone, with nothing accomplished. Everything seems out of reach, and I am left with the sense that time has been wasted.
What’s even harder to bear is the fact that no matter how many sleepless nights I endure, I can never sleep past 6 a.m. Once 6 a.m. arrives, it’s as if the door to sleep is completely closed. No matter how tired my body is, no matter how badly I crave rest, once 6 a.m. hits, my body inexplicably wakes up, and I can’t even feel sleepy. No matter how much I lie down, no matter how hard I try to rest, time just keeps slipping by, wasted. It’s as though my body is saying, “You’re not allowed to sleep anymore,” and I wake up completely, as if it were some predetermined fate.
And yet, the irony is that, despite these sleepless nights, I possess the uncanny ability to wake up at exactly the same time every day. Of course, it’s not the healthy rest that people normally enjoy, but I always wake up at 6 a.m. without fail, pushing my desire for sleep out of reach. There is no time to sleep, and time just slips away.
Meanwhile, other people seem to be able to sleep in, miss alarms, and even show up late for work. I can’t help but envy their ability to experience the “normal” passage of time. But for me, every morning at 6 a.m. is an absolute certainty, like clockwork. I wake up earlier than anyone else, as if it were my “special talent.”
