While the idea for this post came to me at four o’clock in the morning after I’d already given up on the idea of sleeping until my alarm and relocating to the family room with a book, my complicated relationship with sleep and rest is longggg and (ironically) exhausting. When people laugh off my sleep-related comments as solely related to pregnancy or say snarky things under their breath about how I’ll “never sleep a full night again” once I become a parent, I can’t help but shrug it off—or possibly even roll my eyes.
Sleep and I have been at odds for the better part of the last decade.
I can pinpoint the night it started.
I remember thinking it was kind of hilarious and random that I just… never fell asleep one night. I texted my roommates—two friends with whom I shared a place on the lower East Side in Manhattan—something along the lines of “LOL literally never fell asleep!” After that, it was never quite the same. Since then, I’ve seen doctors, tried various medications, adjusted my bedtime routine every which way, and even visited a hypnotherapist. While I definitely experience periods of better sleep and I’ve hacked it at least slightly in the last few years, there’s a part of me that’s had to mourn the fact that I never got to be the kind of person who loved and indulged in that kind of deep, restorative rest. Knowing that my world is about to be rocked by so many post-baby changes, it’s a relief to realize that sleep deprivation will likely not be at the top of that list—but it does kind of bum me out that I never really experienced the pre-kid sleep phase that a lot of my friends have enjoyed.
It sounds like a real dream. Pun intended.
That being said, I’ve clearly given sleep a lot of thought, often (in a sick, twisted way) in the middle of the night. As it does with many things, our society has imposed a lot of beliefs about rest on many of us… and I’m not sure I buy into all of them. Let’s start with the title of this post:
Being “rested” is a construct.
Obviously, we all feel the difference between a night when we’ve slept for eight hours and a night when we’ve slept for three—but as adults, I don’t think that we are ever really not tired. Being a human is sort of a bottomless pit of energy expenditure. The people I know who do consistently sleep for eight hours a night still manage to be exhausted and wish for more sleep! The bottom line? Life is exhausting and I think it’s kind of impossible to actually experience a state of restedness, at least for a sustained period of time. We’re always going to want more, more, more… and why shouldn’t we?
I clearly have major feelings there, but that’s not exactly where it ends. I have some other thoughts.
Currently Reading: The Jolliest Bunch by Danny Pellegrino
While there were a handful of essays in this collection that I enjoyed, it didn’t quite scratch the holiday itch I’d hoped it would. For that, I would recommend Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris.
The conversation around healthy sleep has become, in itself, unhealthy.
If I’ve learned one thing by sharing my experiences with insomnia on social media and elsewhere, it’s that everyone—everyone—has an opinion or a story to share with the person who is not sleeping.
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