i have known many people who complain about their insomnia with a slight hint of tragic self-emphasis. i have read numerous poems that mention "not being able to sleep" at night, emphasizing the distress that occurs at such hours.
while most people who like to emphasize their disorders do it for pity's sake, those with insomnia seem as if they would not wish it to be any other way. They see themselves on the whole as a tragic victim of life, facing the burden of mortality, insomnia being only another manifestation of their inherent difference from the happy majority. Why, then, is the opposite disorder, narcolepsy, not given so much tragic emphasis? how on earth does a legitimate disorder become a part of a romantic ideal?
