My Noisemaker Died…and So Did a Part of My Soul

I woke up in the middle of the night last night – the fact that I was ever asleep to find myself awake was a sheer miracle. It wasn’t my typical insomnia-laden night; I actually fell asleep at a normal time with relative ease. Last night, I practically sat bolt upright because the soothing sounds of white noise emanating from beside my bed stopped cold. Out of nowhere, my noisemaker for insomnia bit the dust, sending me into a full-blown panic.

When you are an insomniac, it’s the little things that can make or break your night. My night was broken – to bits.

Depending on my noisemaker for insomnia

For the last 6 years or so, I have counted heavily on the comfort of my noisemaker for insomnia. It has 8 different settings, but I prefer white noise to any other option. There is just something about the evenness of white noise that takes my mind off the day and soothes my weary soul.

I count on that darn machine. Every night, I reach over blindly and hit the power button, and I have never been disappointed – until last night.

Hearing silence immediately ended my sleep

Sometime around 3 AM, much too early to start the day, silence took over my space. I don’t do silence, y’all.

I have no interest in being able to hear every sound in my house. I don’t want to hear the monster under the bed or the creature scratching at my closet door. I want all the noise. There was no gradual realization or slowly coming out of a deep sleep with a stretch to wonder what was different. I knew the second it happened.

Sleep ended, and my mind started to race.

Tuning out the quiet at night is deafening

Now, rest assured, I do have a backup plan. In those panic-stricken moments, however, it was difficult to get a handle on said plan. My first thought was to fight with the noisemaker – shake it, flip the power button a few times, jiggle the settings dial. No luck.

Then I decided it would be wise to try to tune out the quiet. This, my friends, is as ridiculous a notion as I have ever had in the middle of the night. There is no tuning out the deafening void that is the silence of my house in the dead of night.

Finding a solution for my broken noisemaker

Somewhere, somehow in my aggravated and brain-addled state, I remembered I had an app on my phone for just such an occasion. I use it when I travel, and I was 29 kinds of thankful for it last night.

Of course, by the time I found my phone, searched among the ridiculous number of apps I have downloaded, and found the right 1, I was wide awake and shaking my head.

I wasn’t laughing then, but I can manage a little smirk now. Me – depending on that noisemaker as if it were an oxygen tank and fully flipping out when it dared to malfunction. Craziness, I know.

So goes the life of this insomniac.

Do you find yourself depending on your noisemaker? Share your experience with the community in this forum!