Afraid of the Dark

When I was little I used to be afraid of the dark. It's a common fear, since the dark seems to hold so much that we can't see, lurking outside the periphery of our vision, and everyone else seems otherwise unreachable (asleep) that there's a sense of loneliness that can add to the fear, but now as a grown up, I'm finding a new, different reason to be afraid of the dark...

I've always had problems sleeping, or more to the point, sleeping on a "normal"/regular schedule. As a very small child, my mother tells me, she would let me stay awake and sleep as I felt like. Later as a youngster I did have pretty strict curfews since I had school in the morning during most of the year.

As a young teen I still recall regular sleeping habits during the school year, but in the summer, I know I would stay up later and later and get myself all out of whack. And as an adult, that seems to be the norm and not the exception. In college I'd pull alnighters routinely and for no significant reason. After college I worked evening jobs that allowed me to have reason to be up late and sleep late into the morning or more often, the afternoon.

But the last year has been different, I'm still up late most nights, but I need to be up and at work early in the morning. No one's said anything to me about being late, I've been able to early almost as much as I'm late so I've stayed off some people's radar and I'm always willing to work late, so it seems to balance out. But I don't want that anymore... I want to go to bed at a reasonable hour, wake up refreshed, and not be tired at work. Or fall asleep while driving to (and sometimes from) work...

Things need to change and I've been trying... I've used OTC sleep aids (and I've been cautious not to use them too consistency for fear of developing a dependency) and have been able to start a regular schedule, or at least a different schedule. By different schedule, I mean that instead of staying up to 3am, I end up going to bed at 8 or 9pm for a few days. And once I get a few days going then I start getting worried about losing that momentum; the new fear of the dark begins, the fear that I won't get to bed early, that I'll be up late, late into the night and that the dark will have me once again...