It starts with one night. Just one night, you can't go to sleep. Try as you might, sleep evades you. You flip. You flop. Fetal position. Back. Side. Front. This pillow. That pillow. A twitch. A curse.
Turns into two nights. Then three. You start thinking you have a problem. Cuz you pretty much do. You try everything. Sleepy tea. Melatonin, magnesium. No screens. “Good sleep hygiene” they call it. Sleep meditations that promise peaceful slumber but mostly just make you more aware of how not-sleeping you are. Then, since it’s playing dirty, you play dirty too. Nyquil. You find yourself with a punch card for the Hemp House You go to doctors. You do Trazodone before Lorazepam was cool. You feel like you’re in a constant state of jet lag with oatmeal mush for memory and the cognitive function of a jellyfish.
You’re mad and sad and you’re laying there so after a couple nights or weeks who knows, you say. “Wellll.”
(long emphasis on that word for some reason.) I’m up. I might as well be up.”
This (literal) uprising is an act of defiance.
You do the only logical thing. Organize your closet. When that’s done, you vacuum the crumbs out of the silverware drawer. Sometimes you find yourself in a deep, meaningful conversation with yourself. Other times, you hear yourself grunt.
Maybe you have a “house sweater.” A well-loved, well-worn ripped, holy and stained home article of clothing that had been your dads so there’s strange emotional attachment. You’ve had a knee surgery, which has led to matted hair, dark circles under eyes, and you occasionally limp something out to the trash, looking like a racoon on meth that has lost a leg in a trap. If anyone did see you they would swear you’d popped out of the rain drain or a garbage can.
Once all your drawers and closets are done, you can move on to sleep shopping. It’s like sleepwalking, but you buy things and don’t remember til the next day when it shows up at your door. From veggie choppers and salad spinners, twelve-packs of nylon socks, to a squirrel finger puppet, always a surprise.
Lack of sleep is so much more than just being tired. You’re missing out on all the things your body does when it sleeps, so you’re really getting screwed. This seriously miraculous maintenance work includes:
Your brain cleaning itself out, literally flushing out toxins.
Your immune system doing its nightly repair work, fighting off infections and inflammation.
Your muscles trying to rebuild from the day's wear and tear.
Your liver (working overtime to process all the caffeine you're consuming to stay functional because you. are. So. Tired.)
Growth hormones should be released, helping repair tissues and maintain metabolism. (First thing a trainer or nutritionist asks someone wanting to lose weight? How’s your sleep?)
Your memory is supposed to be consolidating all the day's experiences, filing them into your brain’s google drive, instead they’re scattered around your consciousness like papers in a windstorm.
All this magical work, but instead, you’re downstairs defrosting the freezer.
For me, I don’t even really remember how sleep returned. A co-worker brought me a THC drink that had some affect. (It has a weird smiley face with these crazy scribbled eyes.) Somehow, I started falling asleep, and somehow stayed asleep. I started to trust myself to engage in conversations and the location of my keys (and my car) became clearer. Life started to get back to a varying degree of normal.
One day, out of the blue, I had a thought that caught me by surprise.
I miss my insomnia.
(it was a headshaking thought)
(kinda like… aww I haven’t had the flu in a while or remember that root canal?)
Yes. Not sleeping was a problem. But when I stopped being furious about it, I also started to recognize it as a strange, almost sacred time. There was something about being wrapped in the cocoon of my house in the middle of the night—a different land, a different time zone of consciousness.
Like when Millie was a baby, and I would get up to nurse her in the darkness. After the initial resentment of the sleep sacrifice I was making, and it was just her and I, rocking back and forth on a big leather rocker, a different kind of ethereal connection would sneak in. it was just her, and I, conspiring with the universe on something very, very important.
During my last “sleepless season” if you will, I not only shopped and organized, but I also had a lot of interesting thoughts and ideas I hadn’t had in a long time. Memories came back. Some weird sort of magic happened as I floated through this liminal space between dusk and dawn. Day and night. Conscious and nonconscious.
I don't recommend insomnia to anyone-it is devastating. But here’s thing about the hard seasons. The problem we need to solve, the obstacle we have to climb or the curse that must be broken -they’re all teachers.
In addition to the profound meaning discovered in a perfectly organized panty drawer; I also was aware of that there was a different version of myself who emerged from that solitude. I actually enjoyed her company.
There were two choices: fight reality and stay miserable or accept it. Stop being furious and get curious. After a couple rounds of "Why is this happening to me," the question shifted to "Well there you are, you weird friend. What's on the docket for tonight?" Controlling what was happening seemed impossible, but choosing how to be with it? That was still an option.
There's nothing romantic about suffering and calling these sleepless nights a "gift" feels like a stretch. But in any of our hard times—and we all have them—there might be something worth paying attention to. Some strange wisdom, some part of ourselves waiting to be discovered that sits outside the margins of what we call normal life.
I hope I remember this- and hope you do too, the next time life hands us (or blindsides us) something we didn't ask for—insomnia, uncertainty, change, heartbreak and after we curse, fight and try everything to make it go away, we can ask our 3 am selves "What are you trying to show me?" Sometime the worst seasons are also really teachers- if we can stop fighting them and listen.
P.S Actually P.S.A. It really does suck to not sleep. Here’s a link to a few articles at Experience Life. Sweet Dreams.
https://experiencelife.lifetime.life/?s=get+the+best+sleep
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oh Brenda! i just love you so much. Thank you for commenting !!! you are my reason for being. :)
Love this so much, the way you write moves me and us so much! And few years ago I used to wake up at 3 every morning and I decided to make it the most holly: turned my house into 17th century with the amount of candles and I started praying and writing. A book came out of it so it was definitely “something” waking me up for a reason. I still look at that time with nostalgia:)