insomnia

I've never been much of a snoozer, in fact I've always seen sleep as a waste of time. There's so much to do in a day why would I want to use 8 or more of my precious hours just sleeping? I've never understood it. My hate for sleep though has been a benefit for me though, for example I can stay up late and play/study/bum around and wake up early the next morning and still be fully functional(of course that was pre-nursing school and pre-constant exhaustion).

My whole point in this comes from an AH Ha moment I had Monday-I remembered when I started hating sleep. It began clear back when I was a little girl when I swear I forgot how to sleep, in fact I used to watch my siblings sleep just to see if I could remember how to do it and would practice closing my eyes all the time thinking to myself what I could possibly be doing wrong. I even tried Channy's advice one time to relax every muscle one by one, didn't work. I remember many nights lying awake, alone, and thinking of all the things I could be doing instead. Then literally jumping out of the bed the minute my dad's alarm would go off in the morning just to get up and have someone to finally talk to! I discovered back then how much sleep was a waste of time but that was also when I developed my love of hospitals.

Watching E.R with my mom, late night drives by hospitals, only to see people buzzing 24/7 and the lights on constantly with someone else always around. I fell in love with the idea and began to think about it a lot, the idea of being in a place where it's normal if you don't sleep at night. I guess that's part of the reason I knew I wanted to work as a nurse in a hospital one day because the thought of never being alone at night was appealing, but even more so of being the one for the others like me to talk to when they couldn't sleep.

I realized on Monday, my first day at DRMC, as I was standing on the third floor of the hospital catching a glimpse of the sunrise through a patients window that I'm getting closer, I'm almost there. I'm almost that nurse in a 24/7 facility that I first thought about years ago, and after a brief panic moment wondering if I will really be ready for this when I graduate in a year, I smiled! Finally all the hard work, and bad days feel like their paying off.

I love hospitals, I love people and I love nursing. However I still hate our bodies need for sleep and I always will : )