When I was a teenage, I used to be asleep by 10pm. I was an early bird, usually a 7/8am wake up call for either school or a sporting event, and I used to think nothing of it. Many of my friends and classmates would do all nighters, stay up late and roll out of bed at midday like it was nothing. My brother was the same, 5am bedtime and 2pm wakeup times. When I was 16 I started working at 7am on Saturdays, football early on a Sunday. The morning was what I knew. Sleeping a minimum of 8 hours straight through the day, waking up feeling refreshed. I have always, and will always be a person who needs sleep to physically function. I will shut down if I am too tired and am able to sleep, or I will go into overdrive when I am tired and unable to get to sleep. I am not one of those people who can function everyday off 4 hours sleep, even though sometimes I wish I was.
When my anxiety started getting worse and I started my degree, my relationship with sleep changed. Suddenly I was more often than not having to stay out til 2am, doing all nighters, having to function for a 9am lecture after a late night out and more often than not, if I was in bed early I was being kept up by anxiety. Whether it was uni or mental health related, my brain was always working, and I was sleeping less and less. Soon after all this, I started working night shifts at work. They were fine. I would struggle a bit to stay awake night one, but would be fine to sleep during the day and figure itself out. When I did them seasonally at uni, it wasn't for long so it wasn't as hard to do. The money was good, and I was able to eventually change my sleeping pattern back to a day one because I had to. My mental health did struggle though slightly, the constant changing of my sleep schedule, not being able to speak to my friends as much, getting used to the "normal" times for me to be awake.
Through uni, especially my second year, I had a complicated relationship with sleep. Often I didn't sleep. I would on many occasions go to an early football session on a Monday having not slept a wink, then go home after and miss my day of statistics and just rest instead. A few times I went to the library at 3am because I couldn't sleep and I was bored. One day I did so, went to my day of lectures and after being awake for 30 hours I went to sleep. I had never been the person to struggle with sleep, I thought people not sleeping or not sleeping long was just weird and something from choice. I never knew how tough it could be. I mentioned it to a counsellor at uni, who gave me things to try but none of it ever worked. I used to go drinking because I knew it would help me sleep that night. My mental health was at an all time low that year, and as I started to finish the term, I started to feel better and my sleeping slightly improved.
That was until I started back to my job part time during my master degree. I worked 2 nights a week, leaving the week to do my uni work whilst giving myself enough money to live and not have to worry about money. At first it was fine. My uni workload wasn't huge, I was only in two days a week and I slowly got used to the routine. It quickly however, took a toll on me mentally. I would finish work 7am on Sunday, 24 hours later having to be leaving the house to go to uni. I was having to force myself to not sleep or sleep little so I would be able to function for uni. I missed many days because I didn't sleep or couldn't sleep on Sunday night. The quick change of night to day didn't help any of this, my body was just confused all the time and functioning became near impossible. I was tired constantly, no matter what I did I was tired. Naps turned into 5 hour sleeps, I often would sleep 13 hours because my body didn't know what else to do. My already struggling mental health manifested in anxiety, anxiety and anxiety with anything related to sleep.
I quickly developed almost a fear of sleep. I would have anxiety attacks in my sleep, wake up in fits of crying and never want to sleep again. I had to sleep to function, especially with work, but I was scared to sleep. I would lie in bed okay, close my eyes to try and sleep and have to open my eyes again because simply closing my eyes was too anxious. For many years, I have woken up multiple times in my sleep but because I was so scared to sleep, when I wake up in the middle of the night getting back to sleep was a slow and painful process that made me extra tired when I woke up. Not only was I tired all the time, but I was afraid of the thing that was supposed to stop you from being tired.
Now I have finished my degree, it is almost in a way harder. I have no reason to not sleep, to not sleep as long as I want. I can't remember the last time I spent an entire week awake during the day time and every time I have tried I have slept 15 hours a day after and ruined any chance I had at a normal life. I have cancelled or bailed on so many plans because I am too tired to try and wake myself up for them. I rarely see or talk to anyone anymore, because I simply am not awake to do so. The pandemic just made this harder, me more likely to sleep more often. I oversleep when I am anxious, but sleeping makes me anxious and that anxiety makes me have to sleep more. I have found myself stuck in a cycle that I don't know how to get out of.
Somehow, I have become the person I never thought I could ever. Not only that, but I have developed an almost crippling fear of the one thing that my body requires to function. I have always had nightmares, but when you combine that with a fear of sleeping anyway, they just get worse every time. I think there have been more days than not this year that I haven't woken up feeling anxious. And it's fucking exhausting. When you wonder when you will next sleep, how well and how long for. When people say you're lucky you slept 7 hours, not knowing you are exhausted, woke up 10 times during that sleep and was drained by fear. When you become a sort of insomnia meme, a running joke about the times you wake up and go to bed or the joke that you never sleep. And I don't know how this gets better. How do you improve a genuine fear to fall asleep? I now can't even fall asleep without listening to music, because music to start with at least distracts my mind long enough to fall asleep. How do you suddenly start being able to fall asleep without wishing you never had to sleep again? How do you stop being genuinely, sometimes cripplingly afraid of falling asleep? How can you focus on the rest of you when the part of existing that helps everything function isn't even working?
Every time I go to sleep, all I want is a decent nights sleep. I long for the feeling of waking up and feeling even slightly refreshed, feeling calm, feeling like I used to when I was younger. The feeling that something so simple isn't going to completely make or break your day. Just the ability to normally sleep.
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