Sleep, come to me.

I was born at night. At 1.20 am, I decided that it was my time to shine, and I came out umbilical cord wrapped around my neck like a scarf because I wanted to make a stylish entrance and there was not a lot to work with. Well, entrance or exit, depending on the point of view. I used to get told all the time that my time of birth must be the reason why I am a night owl. My sister is a morning lark, just like my parents. They like going to bed early and waking up early, for no reason, even on the weekend. I used to wake up later and by the time, I was up, she had had time to do her morning routine, eat, and think of a million things to say. By the time, I woke up, there would be just a period of talking at me, on sight. This feels so intrusive, first thing in the morning. Nothing angers me more than being talked to before my brain has had a chance to properly get going.

The nights were always different. I have been afraid of the dark since I watched Chucky by myself, as an impressionable youth. I can rationalize that the darkness itself is not dangerous, but I feel that it has something hidden in it and that something is looming, waiting for the perfect time to get me. By the power of imagination, a hoodie on a hanger becomes a murderer in wait. A good example, I feel, of my mind filling in the gaps when it doesn’t have enough information. While I am afraid of it though, I also think it has a lot of magic in it. I love the stars and how they twinkle. I love the crisp air on my skin. I love the calm of the night and how there is no expectation to achieve anything or be anywhere in particular. During the day, the world rushes about in its race to achieve things, with no time to lose but, nights have a completely different rhythm.

My house was full of rules, of expectations, full of looks of disapproval, full of other people’s feelings and ideas of what I should be, hints of how I am letting people down, and a state of conflict, so I felt that I had to have my guard up the entire time. At night though, things were different. All the energies would go to sleep and the air would be cleared. You could hear the house settle and breathe a sigh of relief and I felt free.

When I was young, I slept in the same bed as my sister so, once we were sent to bed, I was meant to fall asleep right away so she could get some rest. There were nights when she would tell me bedtime stories but, as we grew, I was just expected to do without. Sometimes, I would get restless and tossed and turned and I would get shouted at because I was l keeping my sister up too. There were times when I would tip-toe and step on the right boards so I was not heard and sit hidden in the hallway and watch TV as my mom would be awake. I would then have to go and lie down and try to fall asleep. For the longest time, I would just listen to the clock. The monotony of the tic-tac lulled me to sleep.

Once my sister married and I had the room to myself, I could watch TV on my own, with the volume low. When my parents would come to check on me, my door handle would stick so, I would have a few seconds to turn and pretend I was sleeping. As I was maturing, I had nights when I had to stay up and work on my studies so, my parents would have nothing to object to as I had too much work to do and too few hours in the day. The worst was when I had back pain in my last year of university, and I couldn’t sleep because of the pain that would go from my lower back down my right hip towards my knee. No matter how I would try to lie, I would still be in pain so, I have used the time to work on my dissertation for my BA. I would read and research and then exhausted, I would be able to fall asleep at 6 or 7 in the morning. Once I did physio and sorted the back pain, I was able to go back to sleeping normally. Finishing my paper has also helped alleviate my stress and allow me to fall asleep more easily.

When I moved on my own, it became somewhat easier to regulate as I was not affecting anyone else. I would have times of high stress when I couldn’t sleep, and it got worse when my dad got cancer, and I didn’t know if things would work out. I would be anxious and depressed, and I would watch TV and then fall asleep at 4 or 5 in the morning, get up and go to work and try to function. Sleep enriches the ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions and choices so the lack of it leads to inattention, disorientation, memory problems, fatigue, drowsiness, tiredness, and moodiness. Essentially, I am slowing down mentally. It is harder to concentrate on what people are saying and remembering instructions. It takes longer to formulate answers, and my mind forgets words to use and forgets what I was doing mid-task. At the height of it, I was staying awake all night so I could sleep the next night. As I was working in Romania, every year, we would have a medical check and they would do blood tests, check our ears, and our eyes and then we would talk to a GP about our overall state of mind and health. When he heard about my lack of sleep, he prescribed me sleeping pills, but he warned me that they are highly addictive and that I should only take them whenever I was struggling. He has given me the lowest dosage and said I should half that again. Believe me, sometimes it felt like it did nothing and other times, they did take me out and if I woke up, my pupils would be the size of dinner plates. This too passed though.

When I moved over to the UK and I moved in with my boyfriend, we got into the habit of staying up late, so my circadian rhythm changed. The way it works is that melatonin begins to rise in the body soon after dusk and it signals to the body that it is dark. It slowly decreases during the night. Sunlight entering the brain through the eyes shuts down the release of melatonin. Cortisol spikes up temporarily when waking up and helps one feel refreshed. Then the production reduces as melatonin production ramps up. The cycle works on routines so if you keep staying up, the body will adjust. While my sleeping time was moving to the early hours of the morning, having to get to work meant that I had a very strict waking time. Some days I would be so tired that I would fall asleep before my head even hit the pillow. Other times, I would stay there and worry about all the things that I would have to do the next day, thinking about things I had to solve or even better, after trying not to think about anything during the day and keep focused on my work, my mind would finally see a break in the schedule and would start to analyse everything that happened that day and start making to-do lists. It usually starts with trying to magic myself to sleep, trying to stop the thoughts, looking at the watch, calculating how much time I would be able to sleep if I slept right then, and thinking about how bad I would feel the next day for not having slept well or at all. Regardless, I got used to having a sleep debt. That means that for all the tiredness accumulated during the week, I would try to compensate by sleeping loads at the weekend. That is when we wouldn’t play video games all night while stuffing our faces until the sun would come out and the birds would begin to sing.

Sometimes he would snore, and I could just fall asleep before him most of the time and be fine but when I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t fall asleep due to the noise. I would be so tired sometimes that I would lie there planning his demise or wishing for the Lord to take me right then so I could maybe get some rest in the great beyond. One night I was considering if putting some Wicks under his nose in the middle of the night would be rude. I then thought that maybe I could just hold the jar to his face and that would be enough for his sinuses to cooperate and just give me five minutes. I decided that it was rude, and I just nudged him gently and asked him to turn on his side to stop him from snoring. That didn’t last long so, after quite a few failed attempts, I just went to the other room. The next morning, he came over to ask me if I was upset since I went to sleep in the other room but, I wasn’t looking for a fight, I was just looking for some rest and negotiated that as one of my tactics for being able to sleep when his snoring is too bad.

The period during the pandemic shot my anxiety through the roof. I would have problems falling asleep, I would have problems staying asleep, I would have nights when I realized that while I was sleeping, my sleep was light and I was making lists in my mind, I had nights when I realized that I would be fully aware of every single time I would turn during my sleep. On my left side, on my back, on my right side, back to start on my left side. I tried to walk my anxiety off and use that time to think about my issues. I would use these walks as a way to wear myself out. I have tried warm showers, aromatherapy with essential oils, and lavender lotion. I have drank calming tea before bed. I have tried to not watch TV before sleep and trying to just sit there and think nice, calming, positive thoughts. I tried reading before bed. I once again ended up at the GP since my anxiety and depression had conspired and created some nice suicidal thoughts but this time the GP recommended I take antihistamines. Since sleeping pills were so problematic and I was also meant to take antidepressants, using the drowsy formula antihistamine would be using a side effect to treat a condition. I take the pill, the pill makes me sleepy and then I can get to sleep.

I have had times when while I could fall asleep, I woke up in the middle of the night due to my anxiety, convinced that I needed to take action and do something only to collapse by the door when my brain convinced my legs that we should be asleep or I just get to my door and I realise that it is the middle of the night and the only place I should be going is back to bed.  I still have times when my body feels broken and exhausted by all the walks that I have been doing but my mind is still wide awake and has no intention of winding down anytime soon. My relationship with the Sandman has remained as difficult as ever. While I love sleep, that does not mean that it is going to happen for me. It is just like love, if you try too hard to make it happen, sometimes you just push it even further.

Nowadays, I try to journal when I am anxious and caught in a circle of ruminating and overthinking. I put all my thoughts on paper, and I try to give them a way of expression. I try to sit with my emotions and figure out what problem my mind is trying to solve and what triggered it, in the hope that once I acknowledge what my subconscious wants me to deal with I will add it to my to-do list scheduled after I get some sleep. Sometimes nothing works so I just accept that is the case and I go do something else with my time. I reorganize a drawer, I will read a book, whatever I can do that does not involve waking up the neighbours. Sometimes, I just feel like I can fall asleep easier on the couch, and I need the TV running to sleep so I do that. Sometimes, I need total darkness and complete silence, so I lay in my bed and put the covers over my head. Sometimes, I feel like sleeping in my spare bedroom. I just listen to whatever my body wants to do and hope that it gets results.

I used to think that my lack of sleep was a punishment but now I take it as a gauge. If my sleep is poor, then I need to work on my self-care, and self-compassion and work on getting myself to a calm state again. I accept that from time to time, I will not be able to sleep, and that I will have to rely on coffee and the help of 4 alarms to make my commitments. I accept that if I don’t sleep well, I will not have the energy to socialise so before accepting invitations, I make sure I have the energy to enjoy them and I opt out if I don’t. I will try to go to bed early tonight and if I am too tired tomorrow, I might take a nap to help me make it to my bedtime. Have a good sleep! 😊