Sleeping During the Day Doesn’t Make You a Failure

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I'm waking up stumbling, my eyes half closed as I look at the time, 6pm. 

It's really 6pm for the second day in a row. I've been trying to wake up early enough to get time sensitive things done for days and I am feeling like I've failed…again.

Instead of being thankful that I feel well rested and no longer feel like a zombie all my waking hours, I feel despair. I feel the immense guilt for not being able to wake up during normal business hours to do my adulting tasks. Most of us non-neurotypicals have some sort of trouble with sleep but maybe some of us are just trying to live within a system not designed for us.

I have ADHD and I am bad at sleeping when I know I should. I would just lay in bed anxiously filled with energy of all the things I am excited to start doing. Wishing and wasting focused energy trying to sleep when my body is just not ready to sleep. It is incredibly hard to pull away from something that you can't help but hyperfocused on.

I find when I let myself sleep and wake up that my sleep schedule constantly shifts slowly. Some days my body tires more quickly than others but listening to my body's needs seem to make my life more enjoyable and productive when I am awake. I feel like a person for once, I'm more than a zombie just going through the motions. This feeling is exactly what I have wanted all my life. 

So why do I hate myself when I can't be available in the morning?

Every once in a while when my erratic sleep has to conform to being awake during business hours, it can make me mentally feel like a failure. On these days I do things that makes my body hate me, I stay up way past the time I should and I start getting loopy, no longer capable of simple tasks. Sometimes I attempt to wake up earlier to not force myself to stay up but my body fights me, I'm much more irritable and make more mistakes than normal. On sleepless nights my anxiety and sensory go all the way up to level 8. I am awake but my mind isn't here.

"Why can't I be normal?" I ask myself often. Wishing that I could be functional and be able to do things during the day. Ignoring that I succeed when I let my body choose its own pattern of sleep, usually at night. Ignoring that my mood is only impacted because I am trying to meet the expectations that society has set out for me. I am setting myself up to fail when I compare myself to what everyone else is doing instead of what works for me.

The only times I've succeeded in the 'Day walking' cycle is when I slept for 4–6 hours every night. Never giving my all or being emotionally available for my partner. Depression and anxiety being a huge player in my life to the point that I just exist to work and be physically present.

Recently on my quest to find a therapist, this woman - a woman with a full degree, a full time successful job mind you. Was apologizing for her sleep schedule. She felt shame for not taking clients till the afternoon because she functions better. In that moment I realized that it has nothing to do with the fact that I am not adult enough but my body is wired to work best when I sleep odd hours and that does not dictate how good I am at being a functional adult. 

We are not failures but we are trying to shift ourselves to live in a cycle that our bodies do not want to be part of. Most of us have tried repeatedly trying to make it work, I have, for years. I no longer want to berate myself over arbitrary time that I should or shouldn't be awake. We shouldn't want to coast through life but we should do what makes sense to us, we're adults and if you are privileged enough to be allowed to set your hours, listen to your body. It will know what's best for you.

Even if you can't completely let yourself sleep when you're tired or wake up when you want. I think you should give yourself grace, remind yourself that you're working around someone else's ideal work life. You are not a failure, you are doing your best in a system not deigned for you.