It’s 11.30 AM, I wake up shook to the sound of my phone ringing wondering what day it is and what emergency could warrant a phone call at such an ungodly hour. I glance at my watch and realize I’m the one with the problem, it is already almost midday and once again I have overslept. It’s maybe the 5th day in a row that I’ve attempted and hoped to get up before dhuhr prayer and epically failed. Lately, my ability to wake up has been severely impacted, replaced instead with constant snoozing and “just another minutes”. I’ve never been an early riser, but lately it feels like I’m not a riser at all. Like, barring an apocalyptical event, I would stay in bed all day if I could. I’ve brought this problem up to doctors and friends and the response has been a resounding “maybe your body needs the rest”. Now I don’t know about you, but when my body gets 12 hours of rest a night and still won’t rise I begin to worry. I wonder if it’s the fear of failure that gets at me before I can even begin to breathe in the day. I wonder if somewhere in my subconscious I am thinking about all the things I have to do and decide to bow out before even giving myself the chance. Sleeping is holy to me, but I have had to ask myself recently whether or not sleeping could be a part of the problem?
Last year I thought I had fixed my sleeping problem, or to be more precise, my not-sleeping problem. I used to suffer from severe insomnia. Things got so bad that I was put on sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication in an effort to knock me out. As a remedy I sought to go to bed early, taking a leaf from my nutritionist’s notebook and conking out by 10.00-10.30 PM. Apparently the hours from 10.00-11.00 or 11.00-12.00 are those where the body best repairs itself (I can’t remember which of those it was). Accordingly, I fought to give my nerve-damaged body the best chance it could get by going to bed early. If you are not an early riser, I feel you. It is hard to get that head-start to the day and stick with it. But to be perfectly honest, going to bed early has been my saviour in the last year or two. Before I suffered from this sleepiness sickness I would get up early (7ish) and start the day completely alone and super motivated. I would work out, meditate and have breakfast before anyone was even up, like those go-getters you see on tv. Going to bed early saved me from late-night anxiety spirals or unsound judgement calls, as I knew I would have all morning to myself to work over whatever problem had presented itself the night before. But for whatever reason I am not longer able to access this part of myself. Nowadays, I’ll sleep from 11 to 11 and still not be able to fully get up. I wonder what is causing this and if I should take more drastic measures and intervene. For most of us sleep is the time in which we work out the previous days problems, where we get to recover from whatever took place and start anew the next day. Hence, it makes the most sense to honour your body’s natural circadian rhythm and not interrupt it with loud beeping noises in the morning.But still, I remain worried. Sleeping 12 hours a night can’t possibly be in anyone’s best interest.
Of course I know what a luxury it is to get to sleep in. To not be employed and have to rush to work. To not be at school and have to suffer the ringing of the alarm only to do 7-8 more hours of bell-filled life. One of the things I’ve learned in an effort to calm my anxious thoughts and take charge of my insomnia is to develop a bed-time routine. The routine doesn’t need to be complicated but needs to be the same and involve a certain measure of unwinding every night. Mine looks as follows: I start with turning off all social media a couple of hours before bedtime. Then, I close the shades in my room and turn down the light and read instead of watching tv. Afterwards, I meditate for 10-15 min and do my best to lull my body into sleep. It’s quite uncomplicated and very efficient. 9/10 times this is enough to get me where I need to go. The other time I stand balancing on the ledge of sanity, hoping God will call me to him before the new day sets in and interrupts my sleep even more. I know it sounds dramatic, but I’m serious. Not sleeping for me has very real connotations related to my health. When I don’t sleep, I spiral.
Anyways, enough about me. What is your relationship to sleeping like? How many hours of sleep do you get per night? Are you an early sleeper or a late sleeper? What gives you the drive to get through the day?
Nighty night,
Girl With One Earring
