I've had insomnia for as long as I can remember. I never slept as a young child I was always awake and I thought it was normal until I realized it wasn't. It was strange, I never slept but was never really awake either. It was exactly like you imagine not sleeping for weeks straight would be. I was tired or what I assumed tired felt like, since I could never recall dozing off. I went to many doctors and was eventually diagnosed with insomnia, they didn't believe I never slept they figured it was just my tired mind working in unknown ways or some kind of memory loss brought on as a side effect. They gave me medication to help but it didn't. I didn't tell anyone though because now I knew you were supposed to sleep and I wasn't. People didn't believe me and my parents seemed so happy when I pretended they were working so I kept up the act. Years later when I was in high school I thought my insomnia was cured, I had more energy, I was happier, although I still didn't get even a wink of sleep. I was wrong, very, very wrong. this was the calm before the storm. I started hearing things, things that weren't there or at least no one else seemed to notice. First, it started little like mistakes in a way. Just little bleeps above or below a normal frequency, a noise uncommon to the human ear but could be easily explained away. They were words, I could tell that much but they were so faint I wondered if I actually heard them, and so indecipherable they could have been Hindu for all I knew. Slowly they got louder and clearer, now I could tell it was a foreign language, I did research but couldn't find anything even remotely resembling it. Even in a loud room, I could hear it clearly even though it wasn't louder than my surroundings. I didn't tell anyone because I knew they'd think I was insane, sometimes I thought I was insane too. But I knew I wasn't because every so often other people would hear them too, although they didn't know what it was. When the voices got very clear, one person would suddenly look up from there work as if someone had addressed them, but no one had spoken, or at least no one that could be seen. That is until I started seeing them. I still don't know exactly what they are and I don't think I want to but the best way I can describe it is like a mess of constantly morphing shadows. You know when you see something out of the corner of your eye, that is them, not a feasible being, just something that exists in the in-between of realties. Like something you hear in myths but never give a second thought to. almost like de Ju Vu. Now what does this have to do with my insomnia, I wasn't really sure, but my mother started noticing I was seeing things that weren't there I'm not sure exactly what gave it away but she made me go back to the doctor. They once again blamed it on my lack of sleep, and I almost believed them but I wasn't tired, I felt fine. They upped the dosage on my pills. and this worked for a while, everything appeared normal until one night I actually fell asleep. Now let me remind you I haven't slept once up until this point but this one night, a completely normal one was the first in many years where I actually slept. I was laying in bed and drifted off into a hazy sleep, the last thing I recalled before going into a dream-like state was a weird feeling that I had been here before, that I had lived this exact moment in this exact place many, many times. then I was in a strange place, familiar yet completely different, it was our world, my town where I lived, but at the same time, it was completely empty. I could feel all different universes and realities around me but I did not want to see them. I was filled with a terrible sense of dread like when you are a  child and wake up in the middle of the night to an unknown sound and hide under your covers. except there were no covers nor any sound. I closed my eyes and tried my best to wake up to focus on my bed, my room, my reality. And then I was conscience again. not in bed though, I was somewhere completely different, I recognized it but it was like someplace I had seen in a movie, I know I've seen it before but I'm not familiar with it. that's when I realized there was a man holding one of my hands and a child holding the other. I knew it was my child and my husband, yet I knew they weren't really mine. I tried to stay calm but despite my greatest efforts I panicked and passed out from shock. When I awoke I was in the same place as the last night but this time I knew I wasn't alone. I tried hard to remember where I last was, my life, my friends, my mom, yet I couldn't place one face. When I really thought about it many different faces came up, all familiar yet none I could place names too. I could hear the voices, and this time I could make out what they were saying. You are trapped, one of us, people who never sleep. I was stunned my mind went completely blank and I woke up to the world, a city, a town but I was not really alive. I could see everything and everyone, people talking, people crying, working, drinking, sick people, healthy alike I could walk the streets but no one noticed me. Unless I spoke but when I did maybe one person would look around but upon seeing nothing would dismiss it. I now know that I never had insomnia it's just that my brain was trying to block out what it thought would traumatize me and I do thank it for doing that even though it couldn't block everything. you see no one ever really sleeps and no one ever really lives or dies. There are bodies and there are minds that are connected but conscience is not. every time you think you go to sleep it is really just your conscience traversing the in-between of realities waiting to enter your body again. you, however, don't remember or notice this as when you enter a mind it hides the reality because you would not be able to cope. I am writing this for the people like me who never really can recall falling asleep who have been diagnosed with insomnia even though that isn't the case. try to remember your parents, your best friend from third grade, your favorite teacher, you can't can you, I didn't think so. Now try to remember every moment in your "life that you've had de Ja Vu, or thought you heard someone call your name but there was no one there or felt a presence, saw a shadow out of the corner of your eye. This simply is us the people waiting for you to fall asleep to take your body and send you to the in-between, next time your exhausted and ready to go to sleep maybe you should think twice about the people you can't really see.