For years, I have lived with severe, chronic insomnia. Anyone who regularly spends the dead hours between 3:00 and 4:00 AM awake knows that eerie, suffocating silence in an apartment, where the rest of the world has vanished and your own senses become hyper-sensitive. When you cannot sleep, you become acutely aware of every floorboard creak, every breath, and the loud, rhythmic thudding of your own pulse in your chest.