When will I get a decent night's sleep?!

I’m jolted out of my sleep by a loud, piercing scream. I lay there afraid for a few moments, my heart pounding, not knowing where I am and then, I hear a loud burst of laughter. It’s okay. It’s the noise outside again. It takes me ages to doze off.

We temporarily lived right in the middle of two clubs that are open till the early hours of the morning, almost every night. When the outdoor disco is on, the music is so loud that the windows vibrate, and I wondered why I would wake up the next morning with the latest club song in my head. After the music came the arguments and fights right outside our window by the clubbers who were now completely drunk. And following that, it was the workers emptying out crate loads of empty bottles in the bins, you guessed it, right outside our window! And if we tried to sleep in a little later to make up for our lack of sleep during the night, we couldn’t because around 6 or 7am, the huge delivery trucks come to deliver beer barrels that make a loud booming noise as they were dropped carelessly on the ground. Forget a lunchtime nap. That’s when people were sitting outside enjoying a beer and talking REALLY loud. I’d tried ear plugs, pillows over my head, everything. AHHHHHHHHHHH!

Although I can fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, I am a very light sleeper and most noises will wake me up. The first few weeks were terrible for me. There would be times where I would sit up in bed and shout, “I can’t take this anymore!”

But don’t worry, this is not a post to moan and complain, because would you believe, after a while, I started getting used to the noise? Many times, I even slept through some of it. Sometimes, I didn’t wake up at all.

But unfortunately, this is how people sometimes react to problems. They are in a situation that they know is bad for them, an abusive relationship, a serious health problem, and because they’ve been going through it for so long, because they can’t see any way out, because they think they’ve tried everything to solve it, they just learn to live with it. They get used to it. Occasionally, when it gets really bad they say, “I can’t take it anymore!” but soon, it’s just back to the normal acceptance mode.

It needn’t be a problem either per say. It could be a grudge, a wrong attitude, or some other negative trait, but again, they live with it side by side like buddies.

Don’t get used to problems or you will never fight to overthrow them. Don’t learn to live with things about yourself that make you feel bad. There is ALWAYS a way out.