When most people wake up in the morning and look at their alarm clock, I am sure that their first thoughts are probably something along the lines of, “Dang, I gotta get up,” or, “Wonder what I’ll eat for breakfast today.”
When I wake up and check the time in the morning, I usually think something along the lines of “No……” and sometimes I voice this thought as well.
This morning, when I looked at the time, I thought, “Dang. I forgot to sleep again.”
This was not the article that I was planning on writing for this week. I was planning on writing a very deep, depressing-yet-honest essay about how sometimes the days just seem to run together and the routine of things seems to… goodness, I’m tired. …How the routine of things makes it hard to keep track of time because everything goes by so fast… but the point that I had for that article is gone—poof!—a victim to my lack of sleep and my poor, poor brain. So instead, I’m writing about something that I hate.
Sleep.
No, yes, I know, “Hate sleep?!” Yes, I am (fairly) in my right mind, and yes, I am exaggerating a tad. Overreaching, more like. I don’t actually hate sleep. I hate what sleep represents.
This has to do with who I am. I am a strange amalgamation of various traits that fit very well together. Unfortunately, when put together, these traits do not exactly turn out to be someone extremely dedicated or fruitful. All of my gifts seem to be canceled out by an equal and opposite force that makes it hard for me to be productive at times. I am very creative… but very lazy. I have a great imagination… but I’m the biggest procrastinator in the universe. I can pay attention to a lot of details when I’m immersed in a project… but it takes forever for me to switch from one project to another. I am very kind and accepting… but very stubborn when I feel like something or someone is trying to dictate my life or tell me what to do.
Sleep tries to dictate my life.
This morning, sleep made me abandon what could have been a perfectly wonderful article. The night before last, sleep played with my feelings and my anxiety by teasing that I wouldn't get enough sleep. The cycle is never ending. As I have often described it to my friends, sleep is like an annoying ex-boyfriend that takes up all your time and all your attention. When you’re not with him, you’re thinking about him, and even though you know that he’s no good for you because he keeps you from your friends and all the things that you need and want to do, you keep coming back for more because he strings you along with promises of good dreams… and you’re pretty sure that you can’t live without him.
I also have a list of specific grievances against sleep that I love to see rectified, namely that sleep comes only when it wants to (and not when I need it to), that I feel tired even if I've gotten a good night's sleep, and that it takes up a lot of time that could be spent painting, watching TV, reading, working on homework, or doing literally anything else.
This has always made complete sense in my head, though a lot of my friends disagree. They say that I'm the strange one for saying that I hate sleep and it's kind of hard to argue with some of them. I have friends with actual insomnia who have gotten to the point where they’ve given up trying to sleep at night because they toss and turn and become even more anxious about not being able to fall asleep. And I’ve got other friends that are literally so busy that they’ve pulled multiple all-nighters in the same week, sometimes even one after another, just to keep up with everything. Although my personal problems with sleep are very real for me, next to those problems my grudge against sleep seems almost laughably childish in comparison.
Last night (or would that be this morning?), I was working on something that I had promised someone I would help them with. I didn’t want to have to go to sleep and start working on it again in the morning and then the next thing I knew was that it was 6 a.m. and all I could think about was how if I went to sleep then I would completely mess up my sleep cycle for like the whole week. I had just finished what I was working on, but I thought, hey, why not? I’ve pulled lots of all-nighters. My first semester in college I probably got about 4 ½ hours of sleep most nights. And after all, even though it’s summer, I’m in college. Everybody chucks sleep out the window when they’re in college.
This is actually a much bigger problem than a lot of us realize. American adults in general aren’t getting enough sleep and this is really, really bad for those of us who have tests and exams and things that we’re supposed to be memorizing. It might seem fine since it's "only one night" and it’s just one of those things you do when you’re in college, but not getting enough sleep has been tied to mood swings, impaired judgment, trouble dealing with stress, and a lower GPA, and I really, really care about my GPA. (And I mean that, without sarcasm. Grades are very important to me.)
Sleep is vital to our health. You know this; I know this. And I admit that yes, my mother is right, sleep will help me get better grades. However, sleep is hard to get, especially in college. Part of this lies in the fact that we're all so stressed, but another layer to the problem has something to do with peer pressure. When you’re in college, everybody pulls all-nighters. When I was a freshman I thought this was so cool. Everybody knew what you were going through. Everybody groaned at the thought of finals; everybody was counting down the days until they would be free and clear, off to wherever for Spring Break. And everybody knew that the first question you ask when someone groans, “Oh, I have a paper due tomorrow,” is usually going to be, “Have you started it yet?” I loved this solidarity and sense of community, especially since I was homeschooled and had never had such a large group of people that understood my educational struggles, but the longer I’ve been at school, the more I’m starting to realize that these attitudes can be dangerous.
It’s dangerous to get caught up in the crowd because you never know when that crowd might be running towards a cliff. It’s equally dangerous to get caught up in a cycle of expected procrastination and avoidance. I know several students off the top of my head that work their butts off all on their own, and they do just fine, but the majority of us decide to push away sleep for just a little bit more studying…which, let’s be honest, is usually actually just one more episode on Netflix. Furthermore, if I were to tell you that I was going to stop staying up late and start making sleep a priority, I would be the first one to laugh at myself (and maybe have someone smack some sense into me). Is it that unbelievable that I could make a lasting change in the way I sleep and the priorities I have for my own health?
If you’re fuzzy on what no sleep does to you, let me remind you—it’s not pretty. I’m yawning my head off and barely keeping my eyes open right now. My brain feels foggy, as if I’m swimming through a thick, thought quicksand. All I can think about is sleep. Sleeep….
This is becoming ridiculous. I'm too tired for this and I'm way beyond tired of all this procrastination in my life. I’m putting my foot down here and admitting okay, yes, I need sleep. I probably won't ever begin to like trying to fall asleep, counting up the hours and realizing how little sleep I’m going to get, or the fact that sleep takes up so. much. time, but it’s a necessary part of life.
(Maybe in that respect sleep is not actually an ex-boyfriend. Maybe it’s more of a misunderstood frenemy whom I need to communicate with and work with better in the future. Or maybe I should stop trying to personify phenomena when I'm running on no sleep.)
It’s time for me to grow up, and go to bed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going tzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………
