Sleep(less)

Sleep and I do not get along. We have a history as well as a very complex relationship. This bad relationship with sleep started at a young age. Why though why is sleep so difficult for me? Is it my ADHD? My trauma from being a sick child? From a young age I hated being in the dark (I had night lights and even left the light on inside my closet). I also hated the feeling of being alone. My mom and dad bought me a big cd player so that I could fall asleep to music. Oh and speaking of that I LOVED sleeping in their bed far past the “normal age” where that stops. They had to create a calendar where I would get a sticker for every night I spent in my own bed, then once I got a certain number, I got some sort of Barbie prize I wanted.

That was when I was in kindergarten, oh no the sleep mishaps don’t end there. During my parents’ divorce, I would often beg to sleep in my mom’s room (and most of the time it worked). Once she started dating my now stepdad that changed. I remember distinctly one night staying up reading and being caught by my stepdad.

Throughout middle school, I would stay up listening to Michael Phelps’s audiobook and listening to music. Oh, and high school don’t get me started I spent all night on Tumblr, playing Temple Run or some other nonsense on my iPod touch, iPad and then iPhone. When I got older, I would stay up doing homework. Anyways you get the point but wait there’s more.

In my sophomore year of college, I lived with my then boyfriend’s apartment. Well I also had sleep problems my freshman year, but overall, they weren’t too bad compared to my sophomore year. We slept together most nights. Well, I didn’t sleep. I cried, and I cried. I scratched myself. I was miserable. My mind would not shut off. As soon as I stopped the YouTube video, I would get anxious and end up cracking. You might be thinking about what about that boyfriend of yours? Didn’t he help you? Well yes when he could he did help me. Countless times I remember being wrapped up in his strong arms, when I’d seriously start scratching, he’d hold me so that I couldn’t scratch myself.  

Overtime this wore on him. He never really said it did, but it did. I remember so many nights trying to wake him up. Now what I’m about to tell you took me a LONG time to realize. Here it is: it wasn’t his job to deal with this. Sure he should’ve been more receptive to my needs. He could’ve suggested that I go to therapy. However, that is beside the fact.

You get the point. Sleep is difficult for me. Oh and don’t get me started on my night terrors. Over the past year or so I began having night terrors. I would yell “Where am I?” even when I knew good and well where I was. Not to mention the fact that at times- I just lose control of my body motions. I toss and turn- contort myself into the weirdest positions, it was not pretty at all. Recently I have begun meditating and I think that if I use this more when falling asleep that it will be helpful for me.

I guess it wouldn’t be fair of me to give sleep this terrible rap- during my junior year that’s all I did my first semester. As the semester wore on I would go to bed super late, wake up usually just in time to go to work, and then stay up late again. I got caught in this vicious cycle. I used it as a way to escape the world when my emotions became too much. Ok, I admit it I was abusing sleep.

This semester at school I will most certainly make sure that I do better at trying to get on a “normal schedule”. I say this as I’m writing at 4:39 AM. It is like that sometimes. We all aren’t perfect. I just find something comfortable being awake when the world is supposed to be asleep. If only I had a future career that would put this to use. Who knows maybe one day I will be able to use this to my advantage, but until then Grace is going to get her sleep schedule on lock.

Grace Bibus 1/8/19