Sleep Problems

                                    

                                              
My usual sleep routine consists of getting ready for bed and turning out the lights around 10 then staying up on my phone for a while.
                          
If I stay up past 2, I might get out of bed and impulsively do something my tired brain thought up.
                          
Then, I sleep for roughly 12 hours if undisturbed.

                          
Weekdays I get more or less than 6 hours of sleep.
                          
I've been told by a bazillion people that it's unhealthy or something.
                          
But I have self-diagnosed myself with what I call Slight Insomnia.
                          
I cannot fall asleep before 11. If I do manage (without influence of NyQuil), then I wake up tired and with a headache.
                          
I think it all started back when I was a young lass.
                          
So I've always been a morbid person, and that was a part of my childhood.
                          
When I was seven or eight, I got really into horror stories and scary stuff. I checked out a scary story from the library at school and me and my BFFs at the time learned a song from it.
                          
We would sing it to people in unison, and we didn't understand why people thought it was freaking scary, but it was fun to freak people out.
                          
This was the song:
                          
"Do you ever
Think as a hearse goes by 
That you may be the next to die
They'll wrap you up 
In a big white sheet
From your head
Down to your feet
The worms crawl in
And the worms out
Through your stomach 
And out your snout
Your eyes fall out
And your teeth decay
And that's the end
Of a perfect day"
                          
Two little girls. Singing this. In unison. Smiling. I'm surprised they didn't take us to therapy.
                          
Anyway, I got really into scary stuff and I became super paranoid. Demons, ghosts, clowns, witches; they were hiding around every corner, in every shadow. Ready to leap out and... well, my imagination never got that far. 
                          
They were there in my mind, and that was enough to scare the living s*** out of me.
                          
So that led to trouble sleeping. 
                          
Talking about creepy stuff in the daytime is easy, but when it's night...
                          
So I didn't stop reading horror stories and things like that because in the daylight it didn't seem real.
                          
I had a CD player in my room, and some CDs of my favorite musicals, for example, The Sound of Music, The West Side Story, and Footloose.
                          
So for about three years straight I would listen to The Sound of Music soundtrack every night. Then I listened to West Side Story and by the time 6th grade rolled around, I'd stopped doing the creepy stuff and I was back on track.
                          
But.
                          
I thought I was okay. So I read some creepy stuff and got paranoid again.
                          
I vowed I'd never read a horror story until high school.
                          
I kept that promise.
                          
In 9th grade, I remembered that and I was like, hey, I can read that kind of stuff again, I'm mature now.
                          
Took me about a week or two or reading a book on Wattpad entitled "Scary S***" (without the asterisks) to realize I was yet again paranoid.
                          
Now I've avoided reading and creepy things altogether. 
                          
I still watch some low-key scary videos sometimes in the day, specifically, "Buzzfeed: Unsolved".
                          
The thing is, when I read something, it's much more real to me than if I watch it.
                          
Reading requires a great deal of imagination. And my imagination can be pretty screwed up.
                          
Nowadays, I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in witchcraft. I don't belive in monsters. I do believe in demons. And most importantly, I do believe in God.
                          
Through all the sleepless nights, my one comfort was the truth that God was watching over me and protecting me.