Love is a Better Lullaby

I don’t like to nap. Even with a six-month old baby and a two-year-old, I hate falling asleep. My husband knows that if I decide to lay down, I am exhausted beyond the point of functioning.

Sleep has always felt like a waste of time to me, and I’ve never fully understood why. I am not a type-A go-getter. I don’t rise at the crack of dawn and go until the day is done. In fact, if I were to let the self-hatred part of me speak, it would describe me as pretty lazy, and I don’t know that I’d fully disagree. My sink is rarely void of dirty dishes, there’s always laundry to do, my two-year-old runs around all day in her pj’s and unkempt hair. I do not stay on top of my life the way I could.

But when I really take the time to think about it, I know that the sleep itself is not the biggest problem, it’s the falling asleep. That is when I feel powerless against my mind and that is what I hate the most.

Step 1 to Falling Asleep: Remember That Going to Bed Scared Doesn’t Mean Tomorrow Will be Scary.

When I was nine my family lived in the parsonage of an old sandstone church. For over a hundred years a pastor and his family would reside in the house while leading God’s flock next door every Sunday, and my father and family did the same. The house felt off to me from the moment I walked through the door, but I didn’t say anything. It was this or a homeless shelter, so I was grateful. The basement was really just a cellar with ancient stone walls and dirt and dark rooms in the back filled with old Christmas decorations. The attic was equally eerie, with only a few solid wooden planks to walk on and mouse and bat carcasses scattered about in strands of loose insulation.

It started with the feeling of being watched from the corner across the living room. I ignored it as best I could, summing it up to my imagination. There were a few times when my older sister would call me to one of the other rooms and tell me to stand quietly with her and listen for the breathing sounds. The breaths had the heaviness of a man’s exhale and we would hold our own breaths and listen, ruling out possibilities of where it could be coming from. Being children, we had always been told adamantly that ghosts did not exist, so, naturally, we ruled that out first. It wasn’t until I started hearing footsteps in the hall that I entertained the idea of “something else” being there with us. It sounded like leaden boots falling rhythmically up and down the hall. I would tip-toe to the door, thinking my dad was the one pacing, but the instant my fingers grazed the doorknob, they would stop and I would open the door to an empty hall. And as soon as I climbed back under the sheets, they would start up again. I don’t know how many nights this went on, but it seemed endless at the time. My family didn’t believe me.

When my littler sister, only five at the time, was napping in that same room, she heard something crawling up the side of the house. It began to mutter something outside the second-story window, though she couldn’t tell what. She spent the rest of her nap on the stair landing and was too afraid to sleep in that room again. My family did not believe her, either.

By the time I was thirteen, I was afraid of the house and began to experience my first real problems with sleep. There was one night in particular I felt so uncomfortable and uneasy in my room I went to the couch, hoping it would better ease me into sleep.

That damned corner, across the living room and shrouded in darkness, captured and held my gaze. I did not sleep a single second. I could feel invisible eyes watching me, and so I laid there frozen and terrified. I had never felt such fear before. I wanted to run away or cry out for my mother, but I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. All I could do was stare back at the corner and hope whatever seemed to lurk there would let me live until morning.

Somehow, I still didn’t believe in ghosts, or the like. I would still consider myself a skeptic. All I know is that I had never, and haven’t since, felt so paralyzed by fear.

We left that house a year later, but some of my memories of that place still bring back that same tightness to my chest. And they usually come back as I try to fall asleep. But every night that I go to bed scared, for one reason or another, I always wake up in the morning and I am still breathing. I always wake up in the morning and everything feels okay again.

Step 2 to Falling Asleep: Remind Yourself That Tomorrow is a Gift

When I was sixteen, I realized I wanted to die. My first true bout of depression seemed to come out of nowhere and suddenly, I was crying myself to sleep every night and enduring every minute I was conscious. That’s when the obsessive thoughts began: you are worthless. How could anyone love you? You are ugly and fat. You should be embarrassed that people have to look at you. No one will really love you.

They played over and over again in every quiet second I had until I believed them unquestioningly. When they started keeping me up all night, building on each other until they formed an anthem of self-hatred, I stopped sleeping. I listened to music or watched movies into the dim hours of morning to distract myself. My mind was disintegrating but I kept it all a secret. No one knew I was so miserable and so I was completely alone in my own little fog of isolation. All I could do to make it through the night was drown out that voice in my head. I would do anything to keep it quiet.

It was almost a year before I sat down to write a suicide note and, instead, wrote a letter of help to my parents. I went to therapy and got on meds, and my sleep improved somewhat, but that voice still seems to echo in the walls of my mind. Usually I can tune it out, but when I’m not careful, it seems to grow louder again. But I don’t believe it anymore. I can talk a little about it now. My husband can help dissuade the thoughts before bed with quiet conversation, and remind me that tomorrow is a day we will be lucky to have together.

Step 3 to Falling Asleep: Don’t Confuse Distraction With Rest

After high school, I had a great group of friends, I had a job that kept me busy, and a spot at the community college with my name on it. Life was looking up, I thought, and for the first time in quite a long time, I felt hopeful. Oh the gift of a full to-do list.

Come fall, I was enrolled full-time at college, taking classes in the mornings, and working full-time in the afternoons and nights. Most of my friends moved away to begin their next chapters and I felt vulnerable. Ever since my episode of depression in high school, I felt that there was an unstable depth of anguish just below the surface, waiting to erupt again, so I intended to keep busy. And after work was done, I would party with my coworkers and overindulge in alcohol so that when I got home, I would just pass out. There would be no time to even tempt my thoughts.

I slept, on average, three hours a night, sometimes napping between classes if I couldn’t stay awake. I had to drop a class because I kept sleeping through it, but that was better than being alone with my mind. Falling asleep was when I was forced to confront myself, and I had every intention of avoiding that completely.

If my coworkers had no plans for us after work, I’d go to the gym for a couple hours, Usually getting home around one in the morning. And, after showering, sometimes I would sneak out again and come home in time to drive to my first class at 6:30 am.

Somehow, I thought I was doing better. I didn’t have that sick carousel of thoughts that used to keep me awake. I didn’t want to die anymore, at least. I hardly ate, barely slept, lost the weight I hated in high school, and yet, with every rare moment I got to myself, I realized I still hated myself. And I was as tired as ever.

Step 4 to Falling Asleep: Count Your Blessings, Not Your Sorrows

When I was nineteen I dropped out of college. I started having nightmares that reignited the fear I had in me as a child. Alcohol helped lull me into dreamless sleep and the hangover in the morning helped keep me thin. When I was twenty, I tried to kill myself. A few months later I got knocked-up by my much-older boyfriend. I was a mess and a disappointment.

I found out I was pregnant in a Wal-Mart bathroom with a pregnancy test I had stolen. I quit smoking and drinking that day and I cried for days.

My family wanted me to break up with my boyfriend and I refused. I grieved my disappointing them as they grieved the future they had dreamt for me.

My pregnancy prevented a good night’s sleep for obvious reasons, but I forced myself to eat well again and work in moderation. I started taking online classes again, one at a time, and finally moved in with my boyfriend. Nearly a year to the date of my suicide attempt, I gave birth to our first daughter.

I had never known love before, and just for that, I had so much to be thankful for.

Even with a newborn at home, I started to really sleep for the first time in years. Even with the little we had, I felt an ease I’d never felt before. Maybe it was happiness, or at least contentedness. But it was, undoubtedly, a taste of peace.

Step 5 to Falling Asleep: Love Makes a Better Lullaby Than Fear

I am twenty-three now; still very young, still struggling, but I know a little more about taking care of myself. I know how important sleep is to me, even if I still dread the falling-asleep part.

My, now husband, and I had another baby, following a miscarriage I still, and probably always will, grieve for. Our lovely new daughter was born blind, but she smiles endlessly. My fear of what the future holds for my girls keeps me awake more than anything else these days. Raising girls into women in a world that preys on insecurity, beauty, and femininity paralyzes me when I think about it. And for a girl who is blind… How will she be safe in a world she can’t see?

But there is something different about my cycle of thoughts now: they aren’t usually about me. They are rooted in love, when before, they stemmed from hate. I have to remind myself of that whenever I wake up at 2:00am.

I usually still dread going to bed; sleep could mean more nightmares or I could risk not falling asleep at all and surrendering to that plague of thoughts. But I make an effort for true, restful sleep now, and I plan only to improve. My sleep hygiene has improved drastically! Shower and tea and talk help prepare my body and mind for rest. I intend to start practicing meditation before bed, too; anything to stay mindful before handing myself over to the chaos of my head.

I’ve always given fear too much control, it’s time to end that and finally get a good night’s sleep.