While the world sleeps in synchronized surrender, I remain awake like a sentinel no one asked for, guardian of hours that belong to unconsciousness. The loneliness of insomnia isn’t just being alone—it’s being alone while everyone else participates in the collective ritual of rest that I cannot join.
Sleep is humanity’s most shared experience. Across time zones, billions of people close their eyes and disappear into the same mysterious realm. But insomnia exiles you from this universal community, makes you a refugee from rest, a citizen of the wakeful minority in a sleeping world.
The isolation intensifies at 3 AM when even emergency services quiet down, when the only sounds are the distant hum of machines that never sleep. You become acutely aware that you’re swimming against the current of natural rhythm, fighting the tide that carries everyone else to shore.
In a world that sleeps together, staying awake feels like a form of rebellion no one signed up for—excluded from the nightly democracy of dreams, banished from the restoration everyone else receives automatically. The insomniac becomes a tourist in their own life, observing the sleeping world from outside its gates.
