When Will I Make Up All This Lost Sleep?

Do you lay awake some nights with the pillow clamped over your eyes to keep out the light from the streets, your breath labored as you try to set the racing thoughts at bay, listing numbers very slowly and almost drifting off before an errant fear jumps to the front of the line in your consciousness and snaps you back awake? Do you sigh to yourself and resume the slow count, knowing that it won’t really work but trying all the same, because what else are you going to do, it’s way too early to call it morning and you’re already in short supply of sleep because everything you agonize about — and even some things you hadn’t thought to be alarmed by — chooses to make itself fully present at the time of the night when the rest of the world is deep in slumber? Do you add your exhaustion to your pile of problems, creating some kind of self-fulfilling loop wherein your worries that you won’t be able to get to sleep are now the reason that sleep won’t settle down with you? Do you wonder if you can ever catch up on all the sleep you’ve lost? Well, I have some good news: Soon — and a lot sooner than you think, but sadly not as soon as you hope for in those dark moments while your hands rest on your stomach and you cram your eyes closed — you will sleep forever, and nothing will be able to prevent that eternal slumber; all your concerns will turn out to be as meaningless as you try to convince yourself that they are in the moments when they’re the one thing separating you from dreams and you will never wake again. Until then, this might help, but probably not.

Photo by Anneka, via Shutterstock