I’ve always had trouble with sleeping – get too much or too little. Not nearly enough or so much it affects me the next day and my ability to keep my eyes open in class. Do not sleep a wink or sleep for what feels like a week. This has been part of my unpredictable routine since the sixth grade. I have spent countless nights, laying awake, staring at the bland ceiling above my bed, counting down the hours I could get in if I were to go to sleep right now and sacrifice breakfast in the morning. Five hours on a good night, two and sometimes even one on a bad night, and six or seven on an extremely lucky night. I grew accustomed to having bags under my eyes when I was thirteen. Got used to covering them up as well I could with makeup. And eventually, it was like they were hardly there at all. It felt like, maybe in the world of the impossible that I somehow lived in temporarily, that they had just disappeared. Truth was, they had only disappeared from my mind. I stopped worrying about how obvious they were and how I looked like one of those mentally ill teenagers on sappy sit-coms that eventually have someone miraculously cure them of their terrible fate that had been made to live out. I knew no one was going to fix my problem because this is real life; real life doesn’t happen that way. But after a few years, things seemed to be getting better – until last night, when I barely managed to get three hours of sleep. And the thing is, you’d think I would be half asleep right now. But I’m not. I am wide awake – or as they say ‘bright-eyed and bushy tailed.’ I haven’t felt this awake in months. Three hours. You know, they say the average human being needs seven to eight hours of sleep each night, and that used to be appropriate for me, as well. But I’m not so sure anymore. The past two months, I’ve been getting about seven or eight hours every single night, and I would wake up feeling as though I had been asleep for a total of five minutes. Maybe I don’t need so much, after all. I should be tired – very tired. But I am not. My mind is racing, my feet are moving – I feel perfectly fine. But what keeps running through my mind is: Is this normal?
I have the same problem, i cant sleep at night half of the time and sometimes when i get enough sleep i still feel tired but four hours or less are now such a normal thing that i feel awake and energized just from that. But the typical eight leaves me feeling more tired, its a weird phenomenon that i think everyone shares.
“I grew accustomed to having bags under my eyes when I was thirteen.” So so relatable. Mine didn’t come from being unable to sleep, though. Since I was 10-11, I would stay up playing video games. It only got worse as I grew older, so, the bags under my eyes deepened even further.
Even though my experience with lack of sleep is different from yours, I still enjoyed this piece. It was insightful and interesting to read. Good job!
This is really relatable, as everyone else mentioned. You put into words what everyone else was feeling, which is a really great accomplishment. Great job!