Insomnia used to be fun.

When I was little, around 3 or 4, I would lay awake at night and make pictures with the the lights and shadows in my room at night.  I created stories from those pictures that entertained me until sleep would come.  I learned to read early and read a lot.  For the next ten years I read other peoples stories all night long.  I began to ponder man's ability to live without sleep.  I functioned fine, or at least I thought so in my sleep deprived mind!  I am sure I would have been a better student, dancer, friend, daughter,etc., if I had slept like a normal person was supposed to.  What was normal?  I have never slept more than 5 hours even when I was sick.  As I hit my teen years I began to write.  I wrote nearly as much as I had read.  I filled journals and notebooks with random thoughts and short stories.  Of course being a bored out of my mind suburbanite who was yet to be diagnosed with the big "bi-polar" label, most of my random thoughts and stories centered around one thing, escape.  I was going to go to any big city USA and become a "writer"!  Which brings me to Insomnia used to be fun.  I did escape to several different cities.  I found the glorious all night coffee shop with the bottomless cup of coffee.  I fell in love with my insomnia.  I drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, ( when smoking was allowed), and met the most interesting characters.  You have no idea the constant supply of material you get from a diner at 3 AM!  Everyone I met made it into my notebooks and journals.  I miss those days.  I ended up back in suburbia where the 3AM crowd is completely uninteresting.  It consist of overly intoxicated twenty somethings who are obnoxiously spoiled with no sense of self. There are no homeless men trying to stay warm with a lifetime of stories to tell.  Where are the cops,nurses, and med students willing to talk about the days events?  Where is the guy who wore a hat made from aluminum foil so the aliens could not read his thoughts, or the woman in her 60's who still wore a poodle skirt.  I can still find an all night diner to sit and write but smoking is illegal now, a vice I have not yet given up, and somehow 3AM coffee is just not the same with out one.