I Can't Sleep.....

I can't sleep.....I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep. Don't you hate that? So much on the ol' mind. Wish I could stop my brain when I wanted to.....unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.
I wish I could sleep....even bad dreams are better than this. I want to sleep, but I lay there for hours with my eyes closed and the sleep never comes...just wheels spinning in my head, focusing on anything and everything...I dunno, maybe I am keeping the wheels in my head bouncing around on anything and everything just to keep them from spinning on certain things. Maybe I know that if the wheels in my head spin on the wrong things, that they will leave tracks, ruts that I will have to continue to deal with when I wake up. Ruts that will rob me of any worthwhile rest while I sleep. Maybe that's what I'm doing and I don't even realize it.
That brings to mind the basic concepts that Freud started, the Id Constantly bubbling under the surface of the Ego, but the Superego keeping it all in check. Id, those subconscious desires and instincts that we sometimes can't even decipher ourselves, with our own rational thought. It fools us sometimes, fools us into thinking that our rational mind is in control.
In fact, in simpler terms, our rational, thinking, mind can be a bit conceited and self righteous sometimes, always thinking that it is in control and making the decisions....Truth is that when we don't want to face ourselves (something that even our rational mind does not want to admit), we sometimes go into "autopilot". It's sort of the time when you say "I give up, I don't want to deal with it for a while", and your brain goes into safe mode (and, at times, even defense mode). Then, once you get into that zone, it's hard to even realize that you are there, and even harder to get out.
The problem is, that we can't always control where that zone takes us (sort of like running through the forrest with your eyes closed because you don't want to see the dangerous creatures, all the while you forget that you may hit a tree at any moment). Sometimes, it will protect us, keep us safe, until we can experience happier times once again. Sometimes it can lead us into deep depression (which is dangerous, because it will fuel your desire to keep running on "autopilot", so you don't have to feel the pain, but at the same time it leads you further and further down the hole). And then, there are other times where we eventually open our eyes and realize that we never moved, that we are still exactly where we started when we started ignoring our mind, and even worse, we've wasted a LOT of time with our proverbial "eyes closed". And then, there are sometimes (the worst case senario, which is more rare) where we are so scared of what we might find if we open our eyes, that we never come out of our "autopilot", that is when, one day when you are old and grey, you realize that you wasted and ruined your life by poisoning it with indifference and numbness, and by then everyone and everything that you wish you would have cared about is gone. And you are left with ultimate regret, ultimate sadness, and THAT is something that no one should have to go through.

I guess that it is all contingent upon how aware we can be of our own thoughts and feelings...the more that we are aware of them, the more that we understand and study them with a critical eye, the more that we can see our minds and individual thoughts as tools and machines that we can control.
Our own emotions don't have to hit us like a ton of bricks, or as a wave from the sea, with us just along for the ride. The more self aware that we can become of exactly what our thoughts and emotions are doing (and not just how they are making us feel), and how we are alowing ourselves to percieve them, the more in control of our own response to those thoughts and emotions we can become. That is the key, it would seem. Most of the time we take our thoughts and emotions for granted, as if they are a seperate entity that we just have to live with. But, in reality, we create (and percieve them the way that we want to) every thought and emotion that seemingly passes through our head. And, respectively, we should have the ability to cognitively shape our perceptions, as well as the emotions themselves, into any form that we want to.
The thing is that, we don't perforn this cognitive feat of self control and perception. It is more of a skill that must be learned and perfected, sometimes on our own, sometimes with the guidance of a counselor or professional. But it is all based on guided self examination of those very thoughts and feelings that scare us so damn much sometimes, and can hurt us horribly if we let them.


Hey, whadaya know...it looks like I gave myself something to think about that I might be able to get to sleep on....it's 5am, and I have to be up at 9am (and I've only been getting 2 - 4 hours of sleep a night all week), so I better try again to get some sleep.