Sometimes I just can't understand the irony. When my bedtime was set at 10:30pm in the past I always found myself wide awake past that time. I never seemed to be able to fall asleep when my head touched the pillow, with me curling up in that familiar position wrapping myself up in the comforter as if in a cocoon. It was frustrating. The feeling of sleeplessness.

And now when I have the liberty of sleeping pretty much any time I want, I start to feel tired from around 9pm onwards. what the lame? My body tells me I need to go to sleep, yet something always manages to wrestle the urge to lie down and have myself spirited away to some distant recess at the back of my head to delve into the dreams I see so often and those I've never seen before; the ones I could either cherish or fear.

Sleep has become nothing more to me than a futile and yet welcome means of escapism. Funny, because I remember mentioning repeatedly to my friends back in secondary school and JC days; and I quote, albeit quite fuzzily,

"The only thing I look forward to everyday is sleep. It's the one time I don't need to worry about anything!"

This is true, actually! It's undeniable that we lose the ability to coherently, or should I say willingly and ably, reason with whatever sprouts up in front of us in the lawless realms that make up our dreams. Even when we dream nightmares I feel it's almost always up to luck to decide whether we snap awake or continue to writhe helplessly at the mercy of our own sometimes morbid imaginations. Perhaps the imagination running wild that results in the spawning of such torture. Daily events, coupled with concerted thought and a rather creative (creativity has become a double edged sword to me as of today.) imagination can conjure up images we might consider happy or frightening.

The worrying, as I imagine, comes after waking up. Personally, I haven't had much luck in trying to recall what I'd dreamt over the past few nights. So far the two most striking emotions I find myself experiencing (in the past) are :

1. An uncomfortable yet strangely pleasing churning of the stomach figuratively resembling the feeling of having a rather excited group of butterflies darting about inside, and

2. Goosebumps accompanied by a wrenching ache in the left side of the chest, mind in a whirl, perhaps slight perspiration.

Over the past few days I've come to notice that it wasn't sleeping that was difficult. It was waking up!

Strange, how I don't feel in the least bit rested even after a good night's sleep. Of course, I would hardly consider 7-8 hours of sleep a 'good night's worth', taking into account the fact that on lazy day I would wake up after accumulating around 12 hours of sleep. But then again, 7-8 hours is more than enough, actually. We all have to step out of our comfort zones sooner or later. 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep and still tired? One would expect to feel refreshed and energized after a good dose of shut eye.

Ah, now even the escape I look forward to every night when I shut off the lights and clamber into bed seems slightly distasteful. It's almost certainly unnerving.