When Sleep Eluded Me

4 September 2009

I was lying in bed with the window open next to me.  I could hear a car zooming by down the street. I could hear the wind and felt it blowing against the side of my body.

I could see the curtains blowing softly.  I could see the silhouette of the trees outside. It felt like I was standing outside a house that looked empty all by myself on a dark eerie night.

That was the feeling I get when cool wind blew on the side of my body and on my neck. I could also hear the leaves rustling around and the shells wind chimes clanging outside my balcony. 

It was 1:59 AM and I was supposed to be asleep at that time but I just had to write on my Active Notes pad on my handphone as my mind was working overtime (didn't I mention earlier how caffeine affected me terribly?) 

My brain kept surging with ideas for what I wanted to include in my posting on "What Retirement Means to Me: Alphabetically".  I just had to write (but doing it very discreetly so as not to disturb my husband who was fast asleep) because the ideas just came freely (my brain is usually most active and alert in the stillness of the night) and there was no stopping my brain when it's on overdrive. 

As you would have noticed earlier when you read my alphabetical posting on Retirement, all those ideas actually came when everyone else was fast asleep at 1:59 AM, when my eyes refused to shut, when my brain was hyper active, when my body felt very weary and tired, but sleep eluded me.

If I did not capture the flow of my thoughts at that instance, I would probably forget by the next morning. And I needed to be preoccupied as sleep eluded me. By the time I had reached the alphabet "Z", my eyes were feeling droopy but sleep still eluded me.  I remembered the culprit.  The caffeine in the teh tarik.  That's the effect you have on me. No more teh tarik, no more...................