I am beginning the first draft of this article at 4:30 a.m, because I have been awake since 6:30 p.m.
My poor sleep schedule has been an issue of mine for as long as I can remember. I’ve never slept well. Some nights I’ll fall asleep only to find myself painfully awake three hours later. Some nights I don’t fall asleep until 4 a.m, causing me to sleep all of the waking morning away. I tend to sleep during the day, but I wouldn’t call it “nap time”, because naps are supposed to be short. I may sleep for three to five hours in the middle of the afternoon. Any given day, I might sleep in five hour increments throughout the 24 hours spread between seven hour shifts of wakefulness, no matter what time of day.
During middle school and high school, my sleeping pattern would sometimes really mess me up. An institution that demands one’s presence for seven to eight uninterrupted hours of work is not a friend to the sleepless student. I spent many days during grade school actively fighting sleepiness, and sometimes failing—I was no stranger to a lunch-time snooze in the library or picking a desk for a bed during my last class of the day. I would fall asleep as soon as I came home. I would do my homework when I woke up in the middle of the night, suddenly as awake as normal people might find themselves in the morning.
The things about me that have carried over to college times are things that I more or less consider my permanent characteristics. By the time I woke up at 3 a.m during the first night of dorm living, I realized that my sleeping habits are irreversibly abnormal. This is only annoying for a couple of reasons.
In addition to sleeping at strange time intervals, I sleep like an absolute rock. It’s kind of a marvel sometimes, the way I might have a full conversation with someone and not remember it at all because I was mostly asleep. The way friends have tried to awaken me only to receive a snappy, crabby response, if one at all. And no, I will likely not wake up to my phone ringing or buzzing, even when people are trying to get in touch with me about the plans with them that I’m sleeping through… or the class that I’m inadvertently skipping. I missed one class freshman year over and over again because it started at 6:30pm, and I would sleep right through it. What’s worse than sleeping through plans and obligations is being awake at odd hours of the day. Most of my time as a night crawler is spent in solitude, which at some times is enjoyable but other times makes me annoyed that I wasn’t awake earlier to join the world of the living.
I have a lot of back and forth like this about my sleep schedule (which is probably why I haven’t gone to see a doctor about it). Sometimes I’m annoyed with my abnormal cycle, but other times I can find a peaceful sort of stillness in being awake when most others are asleep. It’s interesting to see the world I live in void of natural light, only lit up by man-made supplements for the sun’s absence.
If you find yourself struggling to maintain a regular sleeping pattern, I might recommend that you make an effort to regulate it… unless you’re like me, and can find reasons to enjoy the abnormal.
