Awake in a tired self

 

Photo by Megan te Boekhorst (Unsplash)

I don’t quite know why but sleep is the one thing I want but never fully get. Don’t get me wrong I do get the recommended 8 hours of sleep… sometimes but that is not the problem. I mean technically it is a problem when I wake up after 8 hours and still don’t feel rested at all but that is another problem for another day.

My point is that I do sleep but the actual sleep is not the problem here. The problem is what happens before I fall asleep. Somehow, sleep just does not come easy to me and I have tried everything from exercise to medication. Nothing truly works. It is like a battle with my mind.

Let me explain. The reason I can´t sleep at night is simply because my mind is awake. My body can be tired as can be. My muscles can relaxingly weaken significantly. My eyelids can threaten to fall but one thing is for sure. I can´t sleep when my mind is racing.

Honestly, I just don’t know how to shut up that mind. One moment I may be replaying an old conversation, another I may be thinking of something new, then I could suddenly plan my future. And trust me when I say that this is not all sunshine and rainbow.

Thinking about a joke I could tell or preplanning my already planned future are the good parts of my sleeplessness. The darker side of sleeplessness is when those thoughts turn into demons. Worries, troubles, doubts, all those negative thoughts that could dampen your day and ruin your night.

I am no stranger to the constant stressing. I am no stranger to overthinking. I am no stranger to not sleeping at night. However, the reason for the lack of sleep just occurred to me during my pre-sleep thought sessions. The irony.

Before I thought, taking a long time to fall asleep is normal human behaviour because I have no one to compare it to. It is just me, my bed and I. However, seeing the faces and weird looks people gave me when I told them it takes me at least an hour to fall asleep every night gave me an idea that it was not normal at least by their standards.

It did not take long for me to dive deeper into the reason why I can´t fall asleep. Let´s face it; if I am curious, I will find out one way or another. Ironically, I dove deeper into the reason always when I am supposed to fall asleep. 

After putting one on one together. My overthinking led me down, not only a dark path but also a sleepless one as well. Without my mind racing. Without the options flying. Without the thoughts suddenly appearing. I would probably have fewer problems falling asleep.

However, after so many years of sleeplessness and learning how to cope with its effects, does it really need to change? Don’t get me wrong, sleeplessness is not pretty and its effects can be miserable but it has been hard to fall asleep for years. Would change be necessary? What doesn’t kill only makes you stronger right?

In case, you did not catch the sarcasm in the previous passage… I was being sarcastic. Of course, I need to change that habit but the problem is I have no idea how. Sometimes I just wish my mind would just shut up. Stop running for just a second. How peaceful that could be.

Sometimes I just wish there would be some kind of medicine that could make my mind stop. Something that would just kill it for however long it takes an average human to fall asleep. Just make it stop racing. Turn the fast waterslide into a lazy river or something.

Honestly, being awake in a sleepy body is not such a bad thing when one does not consider procrastination a bad thing. However, if you do consider procrastination and slacking a bad thing then you are in for a ride. A sleepless one for that matter of fact.

When you are awake in a tired body, you tend to think, a lot. About conversations, you had today. How the conversations could differ if you said something else. How people will perceive you differently if you did something different. How future conversations could play out. Mentally preparing yourself for tomorrow.

There is no telling what my mind would think of in the evenings but one thing is sure, it may think about sleep but is never going to get it if it keeps thinking about it. Thinking about sleep is only making my mind race more. How many hours I will get? What will happen during sleep? The dreams. My surroundings.

When one is thinking about all these things that one can think of in the evening, one little thought could also slip into one´s stream of thoughts. Making one anxious. Paranoid. Worried. Making one feel worthless and as if one needs to do something now.

The thought, you may ask. The list of things you would need to do. The exams you need to study for. The chores on your list. The tasks you still haven´t finished. Everything that still needs to be done. That one little thought could ruin your night and sleep.

I am not the kind of person that wakes up in the middle of the night remembering the things that I still need to do. That entails that I was asleep in the first place, which I am most likely not. During those hours when I am wide-awake, I sometimes mentally go down the long list of things I still want to do and finish.

Now the dilemma I face, when that thought comes. Should I stay in bed and try to sleep or should I get up and try to get the job done? Should I risk my sleep for more lack of sleep? Should I not finish the tasks and attempt to fall asleep?

Funny enough, this is argument is playing out in my head when I am supposed to fall asleep. This little dilemma is just another thing that is keeping me awake at night. Just another thing that sends my mind on a discovery quest even though the body does not want to play along.

First scenario: Stay in bed and try to fall asleep. Let´s face it when your eyelids feel ridiculously heavy and you feel weak, the last thing you would want to do is to get up in the middle of the night to finish the tasks you were supposed to finish in the morning.

Nevertheless, if you are anything like me, you would suddenly have an urging guilty feeling forcing you out of bed but what if you tried to repress the urge to get up and get working? Will you get your long desired rest or will your mind crush you with guilt in the meantime?

From my experience, the guilty feeling does not go away over time but after a few hours, I will fall asleep somehow. Was the sleep long? Comparably, yes. Was the rest good? Probably. Was I feeling guilty? Certainly.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for sleep, a blissful relaxing sleep but the rest does not feel peaceful at all if your mind keeps on ambushing you with these irritating thoughts of things you need to do, which will keep you up all night. Forget studying, I know the reason for my sleep deprivation.

Therefore, when one does not one a guilty feeling nagging at the back of one´s mind and want to get things done in the meantime instead of lying in bed all night just thinking. What can one do in the middle of the night? One word, work. This brings me to the other option.

Second scenario: Get up and get working. Even though every part of you is screaming that, they would want to rest. You ignore their plea and get up to not waste the precious time, so you can do something useful instead of just lying around.

If you are anything like me, you would suddenly have an urging guilty feeling forcing you out of bed but what if you just allowed it? Will you get your tasks to finish and put your remorseful mind to rest or will exhaustion overtake you?

Did getting up and working help me fall asleep later? Not really. Just taking one fish out of the pond does not mean that there are no more fish in the pond. There are always other fishes swimming around and keeping you awake.

Did I get some work done in those hours? Yes, but the quality of the work is… let´s just say it is not my best work. Did I wake up exhausted? Obviously. Did I get some rest to shut up my guilty mind? Eventually after some time.

By working, I am inadvertently distracting myself from the fact that I would need some rest but at the same time making myself more exhausted in the process. However, this does not mean I would end up falling asleep once my head hits the pillow.

Quite the opposite, thanks to the working, my mind has more idea. Work is just fuel to the sleepless fire burning in my mind. Without getting up, I will not get more ideas and will only be able to think of things I was already thinking about. Now I just have more. So much more to think about.

Funnily, neither scenario is good. No matter what scenario, one decides to end up choosing, one will feel guilty. Get up? You will feel guilty for not getting any sleep. Stay in bed? You will feel guilty for not doing something in the time you are lying awake in bed. Lose-lose either way.

Of course, there are ways to overcome sleeplessness. For example by putting electronic devices aside for the rest of the night. Do some exercises that would relax muscles. Go through the routines that make falling asleep easier.

However, with those suggestions, I always feel like “been there, done that, doesn’t work”. Many people just assume that I don’t try hard enough to fall asleep but that is not necessarily true. I tried so much, nothing really works for me in the long run, and I am stressing out about it.

I am fully aware of the effects that sleep deprivation can have on your body and brain. Many consequences that I am facing but at the same time do not want to face. For example, weakened immune system. I need my immune system up and running, not weak and failing. Or reduced brain function. In case it was not clear before, I need my brain.

I also know the benefits of good sleep. How it can help reduce stress, boost memory and lower blood pressure. All the things I do want but can´t get because of the sleep my mind is depriving me of. It is a bit weird. My brain knows that it harms me but does not do anything about it.

Sleep deprivation is just something that here is to stay if I don’t do anything about it. Sleep deprivation is not necessarily bad but it is not good either. Sleep deprivation is what it is. The person is just deprived of the thing it needs. That is it. Nothing more nothing less.

However, the questions surrounding sleep deprivation is not that simple. What led up to it in the first place? What can be done about it? What one can try to avoid it? For everyone the reason for sleep deprivation is different. For everyone, there will be a different thing that could end up helping.

Until then, I guess I have to keep looking for something to calm my mind before I try to fall asleep. However, it is just so tragic that the only option I can think of is to knock my mind unconscious to make me fall asleep.

This is just me trying to explain to myself why I need to fall asleep somehow because the way things currently are is not working out in my favour. Maybe one day I will reread this blog and remember the silly years when I could not fall asleep.