DMB Digest: It surprises me about myself.
Lay me down to sleep.
A few things at this point in my life surprise me about myself. They just don’t seem to fit with what I’ve grown accustomed to from myself. Sleep, for me, has always been the enemy. As a kid, I stayed up late, enjoying alone time late into the night, afraid that if I went to sleep I’d miss out on things I could only experience if I remained awake. Even when I was required to get up at 5:00am to work on the family ranch, I still stayed up late…and then fell asleep in the saddle.
In high school, I regularly slept in calculus class. After college graduation, I wrote my first book from midnight until 2:30am night after night for weeks. At some point in my thirties I started relying on two glasses of wine every night to help me get to sleep before 2:00am. That phase in my life continued until last year.
I’ve always relied on passing out from mental exhaustion as the key method to putting my mind, and therefore body, asleep. Just keep going until you can’t go anymore. Then sleep. Exhaustion and sleep were synonymous for me until quite recently. One of the worst things I’ve experienced in my life, certainly the most terrifying, is a semi-lucid semi-dreaming state I’ve come to describe as cascading thoughts. The sensation is difficult to explain, beyond saying it’s terrible. And it has haunted me for decades.
Under certain conditions, when I attempt to sleep, I find myself stuck in a spiraling state of mental collapse. It’s highly irrational, but entirely visceral and completely encompassing in the moment. The imagery loops I’ve been trapped in can be anything from ghoulish to banal. Once the cascade begins, there is no breaking free until the cascade releases me, some hours later. But the imagery stays for much longer.
The fear of these episodes, for decades, dictated my sleep routine. I couldn’t even attempt to sleep if the conditions were off. So I created an entire nightly routine with the purpose of putting me in the right state of mind to safely enter sleep and come out the other side more sane than not.
Something changed a couple years ago. I won’t take the space here to break it down. I’ve never admitted the content I’ve expressed in this missive thus far. I’m not ready to verbally formulate the part of the story that came next. But the result was me being released from the fear of sleep. And it still surprises me. Night after night, I crawl into bed and pull the sheets up over me…and smile. It’s become my absolute favorite part of my day. It feels weird just to type that.
I still go to bed late, most nights. I suppose habits are still habits even if the neurosis that formed them has gone. But I know I don’t have to. I know I can close my eyes to sleep, and simply enjoy recharging my body. Even if I lie there in bed for an hour and think about things, I no longer fear being trapped in a dark place inside my mind. But the fact that I actually enjoy laying me down to sleep and snuggling the sheets up beneath my chin on a cool night…I can’t help it. It surprises me.
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