Sleep, or the lack thereof

I am obsessed with sleep at the moment. I spent a lot of last week waking up in the early hours fretting about quitting the band and what would be said. This has now rolled over into this week, mainly because the Mule's insomnia has been getting worse and worse. For some reason, however, this is affecting me more than him because he just carries on taking sleeping tablets and ignores the problem and I fret about all the things he should do to actually solve it, resulting in my losing several hours of sleep worrying about his losing sleep. Ah, irony.

To be honest, though, sleep is something I obsess about quite a lot. When I was young I used to have panic attacks if I didn't get to sleep by a certain time (twenty past eight) because that meant I wouldn't get to sleep at all. For some reason, the vision of sleeplessness that I had was always accompanied by a mental image of a badger. I had possibly just learned that badgers were nocturnal but I still have no idea whether this was comforting or scary,maybe I thought I'd turn into one. It may not surprise you to know that I also used to avoid pavement cracks and count everything as a child. I still do it subconsciously every so often before realising but I am saved, I think, by my inability to count well (I forget where I am and, if not concentrating, go back to 20 instead of counting 91). Phew, a brief teeter on the brink of OCD saved by general ineptness.