I have had insomnia all my life.

Mostly it’s the simple kind — function of a skewed circadian rhythm; hours off the daily solar cycle, weak and unsteady, but amenable to hard physical effort. Mostly, when I dance, I sleep. (It also helps if I take my Adderall correctly.)

Sometimes, though, it’s complicated either by hormonal anomalies, mania, or both — and then it’s strange, hard. Not so much that I’m not tired as that my alertness stays turned up to 11 no matter how tired I get. I close my eyes and my brain goes whirling on, or worse, I feel wide-awake, like I could go run a marathon or dance the tarantella or something (which I could, if I knew how to tarantella, to be honest — though if I tried to run a marathon, I’d probably just strain something because Dammit Jim, I’m A Dancer, Not A Marathoner). When I open them, sometimes I can tell my body is tired. Sometimes, I can’t.

This is far less amenable to exhaustion, obviously. In these spells I can take a hard class on four hours’ sleep, walk home from the grocery store, clean the house, make dinner, run up and down the stairs doing laundry, and still I find myself wide awake at 2, or 3, or 4 AM.  Sometimes I’ll finally drop off around sunrise only to awaken at 9.

Sometimes, though more rarely now than in the past, since my schedule allows a great deal of freedom, I just don’t sleep at all. Once, I didn’t sleep for eight days. That was a bad time.

I’m having one of those spells. Hormonal weirdness coupled with mania (happy winter, y’all) coupled with no ballet class coupled with a bout of mild, inarticulate paranoia, as I’ve been calling it: not that “I can’t leave the house because the CIA has planted listening devices in all the telephone poles”  kind, or even the “people are laughing at me”  kind, just the kind where my brain days, “NO CAN HAZ PPL PLZ. KTHXBAI.”

Hataz gonna hate.

So, anyway. Insomnia: I has it, is I guess what I’m saying.

I’m less disturbed by it now than in the past, since I realize that class will resume and I’ll get it back under as much control as it’s ever under.

For now, though, it’s weird and it sucks.

In other news, I’m writing my arse off at the moment, making up for lost time, but still way behind on posting stuff.

It’s coming, though, sooner or later.