With just three lines and a total of 17 syllables in each haiku and studded with prose poetry, Insomnia is a raw, realistic look at how the pressure of doing it all can bubble up to a breaking point and lead to one of life\'s darkest moments.
I am here with you..
I feel you.
I see you.
By sharing my story, I hope to do my part to help break the stigma around mental health and remind others who are in a dark place that they are not alone.
I wrote this book as a way to remind myself that I made it through the darkness once and I will again.
It\'s purposefully designed to lack formal structure and show how a mess of incoherent thoughts can be jumbled and chaotic yet somehow come together to tell a cohesive story.
Within these poems, I reflect on the importance of slowing down, settling in, and embracing simplicity while questioning who I am, where I live, and what \'home\' means to me.
Over the course of just a few hours, I thought about love, loss, grief, and everything in between and experienced a rollercoaster of emotions, ping-ponging between love, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and joy.
Within the book, you\'ll read these poems in the order I felt and experienced them, studded with prose for more context and giving a glimpse into how my mind races and runs at 180 miles per hour.
What started as one haiku led to 50, written in the early predawn hours of May 12, 2021.
While it didn\'t bring rest, it did bring inspiration.
I was so desperate that, one night, I resorted to writing a haiku, wondering if poetry was the secret connection to the area of my brain that regulates sleep.
Nothing worked.
Medication, meditation, yoga, CBD, eliminating caffeine, avoiding naps, no technology at night, warm milk - you name it, I\'d tried it.
It had been six straight weeks without a full night\'s sleep; 46 days total of battling extreme insomnia on top of depression, anxiety, and burnout.
With just three lines and a total of 17 syllables in each haiku and studded with prose poetry, Insomnia is a raw, realistic look at how the pressure of doing it all can bubble up to a breaking point and lead to one of life\'s darkest moments
