When you wake up in the middle of the night and start thinking about things, those things, no matter how menial and trivial, suddenly become

THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN THE WORLD.

Fact.

Lying there in the dark, knowing that everyone else in the universe is fast asleep, is a prime time to start worrying. It’s awful. I am always waking up at around 4am, and I can guarantee that some stupid musing will enter my head and suddenly become the most terribly significant and worrying thing ever to occur to me.

The other night I woke up and started worrying that the way I take off my eye makeup – using a cotton wool pad – will make the skin around my eyes so baggy that by the time I’m 30 I’ll need reconstructive surgery to stop my lower lids from drooping down to my chin.

I genuinely worried about it. In my semi-conscious state, I worried for hours.

Oh my God, I should pat the cotton wool instead of rubbing it – you should NEVER rub your eyes, the skin is just so DELICATE, oh my God I’m going to look HIDEOUS….

Etcetera ectetera.

Recently I woke up at about 3.30am one Sunday and remembered we only had two eggs in the fridge.

OH MY GOD, WE BOTH LIKE TO HAVE TWO EGGS FOR BREAKFAST! ONE OF US WILL HAVE TO GO WITHOUT! OR JUST HAVE ONE EACH! OUR WHOLE DAY WILL BE RUINED!

Quick, think – what else do we have? Beans? Yes. Oh no wait – I’m not even sure we’ve got beans…. shit, did I use the last tin on Wednesday? Oh, hell. Potato waffles? But what’s the point of waffles if we’ve got nothing to put on them? Oh, God, have we even got MILK???? One of us will have to go to the garage, but what if it’s raining? What if it is raining. I hate rain. I wish it would stop raining. My life is being ruined by the rain, my vitamin D levels are dangerously low, I seriously think I’m developing seasonal affective disorder….

And so on and so on and so on.

I don’t just worry about trivial things. Oh no. One night I became seriously concerned about global warming, and lay half awake fretting that the world was going to combust or melt, and we’d all die terrible deaths, and what’s the point of anything, why are we even bothering, why are we here, why aren’t people doing more to save the planet, why are people such inconsiderate ARSEHOLES etc etc etc.

Maybe it’s something to do with it being dark – maybe it’s because we’re half asleep and our brain’s not working properly, maybe it’s a lack of anyone awake to tell us to SHUT THE HELL UP AND GO SLEEP, but waking up to worry in the middle of the night is bloody knackering.