3:38am | of sleepless anxiety

It's reached the point in the night where I need to decide

Whether I'm gonna fall asleep or watch the sun rise

The Front Bottoms, "Everything I Own"

It is funny the way anxiety will rationalize staying up all through the night even though the next day is a busy day. Well, actually, it is because the next day is a busy day that it seems like a perfect opportunity to stay up all night, because how else will you manage to wake up on time?

Your head spirals through the possibilities. You know you have to shower, you have to eat, you have to get gas before leaving, you should have coffee at least. Having a good amount of sleep will allow you to wake up, but having a less than decent amount of sleep is questionable, and we have already passed that point, so why not just get none? You can't not wake up if you don't sleep in the first place, right?

It is funny how this seems like a reasonable process. That not sleeping makes it absolutely likely you will wake up, and therefore it is the far more rational, more appealing option. It's funny because you know that the last time you stayed awake through the night, your stress levels were shot, you couldn't focus, your mental health went down the drain, and your sleep schedule was busted for the next week. But hey, at least you don't need to worry about waking up in the morning this one day.

It makes sense, doesn't it?

Perhaps you just don't look that far ahead. Or perhaps your brain is fried from too many long nights. 10:00pm should not be your morning.

It's funny because how do you explain that to someone? Well, insomnia's not an issue, I just don't like sleeping at night. I am far more productive in the hours that my brain is functioning the least. Does that make sense? Scratch that and make it make sense.

How do you explain that the bags under your eyes that make you look like Goob from the 2007 Disney film Meet the Robinsons are actually deliberate? Voluntary? You want to sleep at night. You just don't like waking up. Is that a reasonable explanation? Can you become nocturnal solely on the basis that you don't like waking?

Or are these even the right ways to say it?

I don't like sleeping. Well that's not quite it. You do like to sleep.

What about I don't like sleeping at night? No, that's not quite right either. Sleeping at night is most definitely better than sleeping during the day.

So is it really that you just don't like waking? Waking is fine. It's waking and dragging yourself out of bed 20 minutes before you have to leave.

It's being late. It's the anxiety about being late. The what if that grounds you to being accountable, to being on time. But also removing your ability to function if you believe you will be late. And then the time goes on and you realize you don't have enough time to sleep, you don't have enough time to wake up.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this little rambling. Thank you for reading this far. If you did happen to take some joy from it, here are some of my other works:

Thanks! Happy reading!

Belle