A Letter to Sleep

Dear Sleep,

Thank you for always being there for me.  I’m sorry that these past couple of weeks, I have not been there for you.  I have been sporadically in and out of your life at irregular times throughout the day and night.  I think people don’t understand how much you mean to me and how much my mental, emotional, physical health, and sanity rely on you.  You have been the one true escape I had from the world that never ceases to overwhelm me faster and more intensely than other people around me.  I have always experienced a profound calm knowing that I can let everything in my sight and mind go for 8 or so hours every day.  Sometimes, I feel like nobody will understand how much I need sleep to function—not just in terms of getting rest but being able to escape the world I sometimes feel I am not made for.  To put my emotion regulation skills and capacity to socialize with people, manage different expectations of other people and myself—all of these, I have always felt, have been things I need to work extra hard on to get the same outcome as everyone else around me.  

This semester or these couple of weeks, two of my loves have been taking up more than healthy portions of my life and cut into my time with you.  My job as an EMT has been my love but I forget how much it rocks my sleeping cycle on Friday nights. Coupled with this Div III project I am living, eating, and breathing, it has pushed me to the brink of irregular sleeping habits, bad boundary setting, and just unhealthy immersion of self going in over my head over my project. I have been struggling with drawing lines between me time and project time and I think it has been too overwhelming for me, especially when I feel like the whole world is different from me.  Like I have to try so hard to just be at the same output level as everyone else every day.

I guess this letter has no real objective.  I am just writing this to let you know what’s going on because it’s been so frustrating and upsetting for me to try to sleep earlier than 3am because my sleeping clock is just rocked from the night I had a Friday shift with a 3am call—please know that I get so frustrated at myself.  And even more so when morning comes and I try so hard to wake up at 9am and either succeed and feel groggy the whole day or fail and repeat the late night cycle. I can't remember the last time I really had much appetite to eat and so I've been trying really hard not to succumb to just skipping a meal.

I am writing this to you because I feel you may be one of the only ones who can truly understand how overwhelming it is and how anxious I get about myself, about what other people think, and how the world is.  And I’ve just been feeling all these feelings intensify and having lesser time and consistent capacities to just shut the world and its worries out of my mind and body for 8 hours.  

Thank you for understanding me and allowing me to breathe and just exist in your space.  Thank you for making me feel like you take extra care of me for being more overwhelmed by the world than other humans—and not needing me to try and justify or explain myself.  Thank you for helping let go of things I cannot change, put difficult emotions, anxiety, and thoughts aside for a night, and most importantly, for accepting me for my whole self.

Your underdog,

Andrea