Waking up.
“For me being depressed means you can spend all day in bed, and still not get a good night’s rest.” — Judith Guest
Sleep has never come easily for me no matter what kind of day I’ve had. It could be a day filled with activity or a day spent quietly reading or doing chores. It doesn’t matter—I’ll still have an impossible time shutting my mind off long enough to fall asleep. Eventually I do—but it’s usually hours after I’ve decided to try to go to sleep.
For the last couple months I’ve been staying up until at least 5 AM. My usual bedtime was always 1-2 AM depending on my work schedule. But now it’s starting to stretch into 6-7 AM. Yesterday morning it was almost 10 AM before I finally passed out from exhaustion.
I baked some cookies tonight using ground flax seeds substituting for eggs. Of course I would have organic flax seeds on hand—but not eggs. Eggs are perishable. Food isn’t packaged for single people—it’s made for a household, and I can never finish anything before it goes bad.
While I baked I tried to figure out why I have an aversion to going to sleep. It’s not that I have trouble staying asleep—that has never been an issue. But actually getting my mind into that restful state is what seems so impossible. I can’t remember not having sleeping issues. I recall with clarity staying up until the wee hours of the morning as far back as kindergarten. It’s not even that I’m not tired—most of the time I’m very tired but that doesn’t make a difference.
And then I came across the notion that it’s not sleep that is the problem. It’s the part where I have to wake up that bothers me.
If I stay away through the night I don’t have to worry about waking up to a new day, a new set of problems, and the same lack of answers. If I can stay in the now without sacrificing a few hours for rest and recuperation then somehow I “win” at today for a bit longer … falling asleep and surrendering another day to the past is the same as losing.
It’s hard to explain. I don’t understand it myself. But as long as I stay awake everything is better than if I have to close my eyes and sleep only to wake up and struggle through another day.
