sleep is for children

Happy Birthday, America.

Something new and strange has started happening.

During the days, even the hard, long, tiring days- I'm filled with perspective. Rest assured that my long list of worries is always nagging persistently at me in the back of my head- but I manage that dull nagging pain by fulfilling the immediate needs and requests set towards me. I take care of business day to day, worrying only peripherally about the things that depress and frighten me horribly.

I come home and force myself into bed at a reasonable hour so that I can have the lucidity and the energy to tackle these days, and thus allow myself fairly regularly a full night's rest.

The problem with these nights as of the last two weeks is that my dreams (if you can call them that), or overcome by that list that I set to the back during the days. Some nights, I'll be dreaming about something I haven't paid, some project I ought to be working on, some information I was supposed to look up or some phone number I hadn't called, and I'll find that I don't even feel like I'm sleeping. In my dream I'll wake up and be in my bed, in the dark, in the position that I fell asleep in. I'll force myself back to sleep in my dream, and whatever I was dreaming about before will come back and torment me. I've lost perspective on whether or not I'm sleeping at all anymore. I wake up and I can't breathe. I wake hearing voices. I wake up, and any object in my room has turned into something menacing. I wake up, and can't remember who I am and feel like I'm drowning in a sea of grey sheets. I wake up and feel like I'm demented, and like I'm actually going crazy. I wake up feeling utterly crushed by the things that I have not or CAN not manage, and these last few mornings I've hopped out of bed much earlier than I know I have to be awake, just to escape from that extra half hour of maybe-sleep.

I'm too scared to go to sleep.

So my dilemma is this- do I force my body to get the rest it needs so that the days aren't miserable- knowing that it's implied that my mind will torture itself and me at night? Or do I keep my body awake long enough that the little amount of sleep I do get is so heavy and necessary that my mind has no choice but to follow- knowing that it's implied that my days will be harder?


I'm scared to wake up some days because I know have to face things in my email, on my phone, in my mail that I'm not ready to deal with.

I'm terrified to sleep because I know I WILL still have to face things in my email, on my phone, in my mail that I'm not ready to deal with.

I'm pretty sure things only get worse from here.