The lucky ones

You know what I’ve envied the most in a person? It’s something infinitely elementary… it is ability of some people to sleep immediately. And of course as with everything, you only envy what you do not have. I do not have the capability to sleep immediately. No matter how tired I am… how long I’ve been up, I have to spend close to 30 minutes every night finding my “position”. I toss and turn in vain to find that one position which gives me the comfort required to drift into my dreams. And if all this drama is not enough, I am a terribly light sleeper too. If someone so much as breathes very hard next to me, I can get up. Of course it’s an acquired trait and so if I know that people are likely to snore, I try to block that out before I sleep so that I am mentally prepared for what’s to come. Sounds weird, I know. And to top it all, I can hear sounds in the ultrasonic frequency, so-to-speak. The sound of a tap dripping in the farthest of locations… the sound of a door shutting two floors above and what not. Add to that the very colorful and vivid dreams I experience night in and night out, you can see that I have a lot to contend with. So you can safely conclude that I end up having lousy sleep many nights. But these days, touch-wood, my patterns have become better and from the thorough insomniac that I was, I have been sleeping early and getting up at reasonable times constituting a full night’s rest at any rate. But still I take 30 minutes… 5 games of Midnight Pool or 3 games of Snake on my cell phone to attempt to shut my eyes and try to sleep. What makes that worse? Sleeping next to someone who can sleep instantly. My brother used to be like that. As late as he could stay up and as sleepless as he would remain, the instant his head touched his pillow, he was out. I’ve always considered people like that blessed.. to be able to put away all their thoughts and meld into nightly limbo. Ah well, it’s almost 12 at night… Midnight Pool, here I come.