I’ve struggled to write this week because I’ve been so effing tired. I’ve had bouts of insomnia throughout my life, and sleeplessness has returned this week and last, coinciding with work travel and weeks bursting with to-dos and a gnawing sense that I’m missing a bigger message. Then I thought, What if you wrote about exactly this?
***
Being bone tired is a universal experience. I wonder if others feel it the way I do—touchiness everywhere all at once. The redness in my eyes goes beyond how I look in the mirror. It burns and distracts me even as I’m writing this sentence.
I grew up terrified of sleepless times like these. I still am. My parents prioritize sleep, which is a wonderful thing on the whole. But they can also treat it with scarcity. And for me growing up—a sensitive kid prone to waking up at midnight and finding witches on walls—a healthy focus on sleep could quickly warp into pressure.
Sleep, like a toddler, doesn’t respond well to being coaxed. The more I need it, the more it resists.
But time has taught me that being tired is a survivable condition. Our ancestors surely had periods like this. I’ve had them before, and I will again. So instead of continuing to mope, I decided to ask myself the question I’m learning to ask even when I really don’t want to: What’s in this experience for me? How can I not simply get past it, but take something away from it?
***
On the plane this week, the woman next to me kept falling asleep and startling awake. Her head fell hard on my shoulder multiple times. I felt a confusing mix of jealousy (of just how easily she was finding what I couldn’t) and warmth (at the animal innocence of a dozing head landing on any warm shoulder it can find) and insanely irritated (because, personal space).
Several times during this series of encroachments, the woman’s phone fell on the floor. Each time, I dutifully went to pick it up. The fall would startle her enough to wake up, and I’d hand her the phone and smile. She’d smile back. Then she would return the phone to her slippery lap and nod off again.
“You do this a lot, you know,” David said when I told him the story later.
“What?” I asked, having no idea what he was about to say.
“Someone makes you angry, and you go out of your way to make life easier for them.”
***
I heard the truth of his words in a way I haven’t before. I can be my kindest and most obsequious with people I’m irritated by. I grovel at their feet and contain the pounding within my own head.
The lesson is deep. And I’m not sure my anger would have risen high enough for me to get the lesson if I wasn’t so tired.
***
Just like with everything in life, tiredness has a flipside. When the inner and outer corners of my eyes itch with exhaustion, not only can I feel my anger more clearly and use it (hopefully someday) to stop picking up every stranger’s falling phone, but tears come more easily too.
I used to hate tears. Now I get frustrated when having them would make me feel better, and they won’t come. I used to be an anxious cat longing for sun, and now I am a thirsty plant praying for rain.
The flood, I know, is the way back to sleep.
I’m so glad you gave yourself space to write about this. It turned out beautiful.
That lady on the plane - hahahahaa. I would not have been as kind as you. 🤣🤣
I’ve been so very tired this week, too. I almost kept my newsletter in draft mode so that I could just write to everyone and say, “Guys it’s not happening this week. I need rest.” (Don’t even get me started on the anger and tears I had on Wed.)
I was also pissed that I couldn’t just write about what was more currently happening in my life this week. I was ready to let the memories of that trip go. But I kept returning to it. And after days of pulling my hair out, it finally wrapped itself up. And you showed up to tell me it did something.
Here’s what I’m getting at:
We did it!!!!!!! We wrote our effing newsletters. And they did something.
I loved the rawness of this one.
Okay my thumb’s hurting real bad now. Byeeeee.