Insomnia and Dyslexia

I am writing this at almost 5 AM. Why am I awake right now? Because I have insomnia and I don't know what else to do with the time. Insomnia and dyslexia are two things people always say they have when they can't sleep for one night or write/say something mixed up once. As a person who actually has medically diagnosed insomnia and dyslexia, it kind of bothers me when people use those terms to describe a one-time thing. I have been struggling with insomnia and dyslexia since I was an infant, and it can be quite frustrating.

When I was about 3 years old, my mother started teaching me how to read and write. She wanted me to be able to read and write before starting kindergarten, so she was always working with me. She noticed a strange pattern developing. I would start with the last letter of the last word, and starting from right to left, I would write every letter of every word backward until I got to the first letter of the first word. I was just a toddler, but I think I remember her saying, "What the hell?" Just kidding. But it was definitely strange. She kept working with me, but I kept doing the backwards thing for over a year. Then she came up with a technique where she would "write" the letters on my back so I could feel how it was supposed to be. That really helped, and soon I was reading and writing like a regular person. That's not to say that I was "cured" though.

To this day, I still find myself reverting to the backwards thing with reading and writing on occasion, especially when I get really tired. When it comes to reading, there are certain words that I always mix up. A very common mix up is "was" vs. "saw". I'll read a sentence and be confused about whether the character saw a pig, or if he was a pig. Comical, yes, but also frustrating. My composite score on the ACT was dropped significantly because I couldn't finish the Reading section. My scores in the other sections were all 31-33, but my Reading score was a 25. Like I mentioned, my dyslexia gets worse when I am tired, and I had insomnia problems the night before taking the ACT. The problems persisted through college too. Luckily, spell checkers can usually catch mix ups when I type, or else I would have been in trouble writing all of my papers late at night during college. The checkers don't catch things like "was" and "saw", though, so I would just explain away the mix up to my professors as a deeper metaphorical thing. They thought I was a genius. "Wow, you are saying the character in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' WAS an albatross?" Genius.

Insomnia can be really frustrating too. If you have ever seen the movie "Fight Club", you know what insomnia can lead to. While I have never developed an alternate persona or blown up buildings, I am very familiar with the feeling Tyler Durden describes as never being fully awake or asleep. I often have this feeling like there is a fog in my brain, and while I am fully aware of what is going on, I feel detached from my body like I am an outside observer. My brother, Ben, has problems with insomnia too, and it is kind of funny living together. We often get up in the middle of the night and watch a movie or play video games. I have seen doctors many times trying to get help, but nothing has worked so far. I have tried going for walks, taking relaxing showers, counting backwards from 100, using muscle relaxation techniques, drugs, you name it. One thing that always helped me sleep in high school was reading "The Awakening." Every time I would start to read that damn book, I would be out in no time. I think my body knew I love irony, so it worked. Some of the drugs have helped me fall asleep, but then I can't get up when I need to. So I have just learned to live with it. I often do my video editing projects late at night because I am in a different mind set and I come up with more creative ways of doing things. I also work on writing scripts and writing songs late at night. My creativity seems to be stronger when I am tired for some reason. Of course, I always have to check what I have done the next day after I have slept to make sure it isn't completely crazy, but it usually works out. Brains are interesting things, aren't they? Anyway, this might all be incoherent rambling, so maybe I will try going back to sleep.