Here I am again, suffering through another night of insomnia. I've been meaning to write a post about about my stateside visit but I haven't been able to force myself to write the words. Now that sleep has escaped me yet again (despite 20 minutes of nightime yoga, relaxing music, and two sleeping pills) perhaps now is the time to compose another blog entry.
I have suffered insomnia ever since I returned from the states nearly 3 weeks ago. At first, I blamed jet lag, as my last days in the states were spent in Seattle, which is 9 hours behind Marburg. Seattlites wake up at 5pm Marburg time and go to sleep at 8am Marburg time so it was no suprise that I struggled to wake up before 2pm during the first few days. However, a few days turned into a few weeks and here I am composing a blog post when most Marburgers are fast asleep in their beds. I pull myself out of bed at 10am during the week (noon or 1pm on weekends). I wander around the office in a daze, finally becoming coherent and productive around 4pm. I hit my stride between 6 and 9pm but I have to rush out of the office by 9pm in order to catch the last bus back to the dorm. I then spend the next 3-4 hours working or trying to respond to friends and family online. I finally force myself into bed around 2am, then lay awake and think about all the exciting email and skype conversations I have to miss because I am 6-9 hours ahead of all the people in the states. After 3 weeks back in Germany, jet lag should no longer be an issue for sleeping. I think the real problem is that my heart is still in the states.
As much as I enjoy my time in Germany, it does not feel like home, which is really surprising for me to admit. Because I moved so often as a child, I have always been proud of the fact that I could make anyplace feel like home in under two months. I was always able to establish friendships and attachments to my new town. However, in all of those cases, I was able to make a clean break from my past. I rarely left loved ones behind. Until college, my family always moved with me. I still kept in contact with friends from my old locations (one girl and I kept a pen pal friendship for 5 years) but I quickly made friends in new locations and didn't worry about maintaining close ties with my old friends.
This time, I leave behind not only my family, but my fiance and many dear friends. The internet has enabled us to stay together, but it has also kept me from taking a clean break. In the past, the minutia of my friend's lives became irrelevant once I moved away. Now with facebook and skype, I know what they had for breakfast, even if their breakfast took place at the same time as my dinner. Because I am feel so involved with my friends lives, I haven't had to force my heart to break off from them. Thus, I suffer not from jet lag, but a lagging heart. My heart refuses to hop on a plane back to Germany.
Jet lag I can treat with a combination of sleeping pills and coffee, I am not sure how to treat lagging heart. Cutting myself off from my fiance is not an option (sorry sweetie, you can't get rid of me that easily ;-) Neither is avoiding my sisters when they call me at night. I have taken steps to absorb myself more fully in my German life. I spend at least two nights a week eating in the kitchen instead of in front of my computer. I try to envelope myself in work during the day, but that seems to fail to get me out of bed. (Sorry, waking up to perform calculations in lab where I can just as easily do them from my laptop on a wifi signal in tahiti is NOT a good incentive to wake up). Sadly, the strategy that seems to work best is to remember that I only have 168 mornings left until I wake up on the same continent as my loved ones. Thus, I wake up every morning in Germany counting down the days until I leave Germany. This is NOT how I pictured spending my time in Europe.
I am unsure of other ways to fix this problem, so I finish this post with a plea for advice. If you know of treatments for lagging heart, please let me know so I can get back to enjoying the precious oppurtunity I have to live here.
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I'm afraid I don't have a way to fix your problem, since it's somewhat different than what I experience. While you see Andy but a few times over the year, I see John (almost) every weekend.
That said, it turns out to be pretty difficult to do so, because every weekend there is the sinking feeling that we're not going to see each other for another week. In short, Sunday afternoons feel more like a funeral than a festival :-(
Talking every night helps, of course. I stay busy during the weeks too, so that I can focus on time with him on the weekends. It's also good because then I can somewhat bury myself in work, often not getting home until 9pm and then going to bed only 2 hours later.
As for insomnia, I have no relevant experience or advice, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait for another more useful comment for that!
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