Sleep on it

There are many reasons to list as to what keeps you up at night. Environmental factors, too much stress, over-exposure to screens, jet lag, heavy food, medicine, or uncomfortable conditions are among them.

Romanticists claim you lie awake because you appear in someone else’s dream.

But in essence, we can’t sleep because we subconsciously burden ourselves with too many thoughts. We won’t allow ourselves to let go of everything that troubles our brains during the day. Consequently, we can’t find that much required peace to relax, to breathe out and alleviate the pressure we exert on ourselves.

We need constructive outlets to enable our minds to wander. To stop thinking for a while. To simply get lost in the moment.

Some would suggest meditation, but that’s not as easy as it sounds, and it requires great effort.

A more feasible solution is a walk on the beach, or even a dive into the sea. Salty water helps in washing away the problems, which we often create ourselves. It will get us feeling refreshed, relaxed, and revived. An essential process in assisting us to gather the courage to face everything that is causing us the initial stress.

We need to find time to escape our worries, if we are to find the strength to effectively deal with them. We can’t sleep on the decisions we need to make, if we can’t fall asleep to begin with.

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Sweet Melancholy

There’s a sweet melancholy in autumn.

Soothing like the dreamless sleep you drift off on, wrapped in a blanket on the couch.

Fulfilling as the vellichor and perfume of old bookshops.

Rejuvenating like the new plans you wish to forge.

Encouraging for the beautiful things that are arriving.

Also part of Weekend Writing Prompt #233

Visions unknown

@gio_quasirosso

He was haunted by his dreams at night. Or anytime he fell asleep really. He couldn’t find comfort in allowing himself to drift off. It scared him. Because of the visions that would appear. They weren’t just disturbing nightmares like he thought at first. They were truths, prophecies waiting to be fulfilled. And he was often helpless at preventing them because they occurred somewhere he knew nothing of, to people he could not even recognise. But the news always proved his dreams were more than that. And he was powerless against them.

When he met her, he was terrified.

He fell in love with her from the minute she laid eyes on him, and she smiled so brightly, probably because she realised that.

He kept falling deeper in love with her in every passing day. He wanting to give her the world, simply because she never asked for it. She was there, like a silent support pillar, despite knowing nothing of his torment.

But somehow, in her arms he could fall asleep; drift into a dreamless REM, and wake up without anguish, fear, abhor at what may occur during the day. She was his remedy, without knowing it; she was essential to him.

The day she was departing for a trip, he knew something was wrong. He could feel it pulsing in every minute pore of his body. There was something not right. He didn’t want to let her go. But she hugged him tightly, kissed him gently, and reassured him that everything was going to be fine. She had that positive vibe constantly glowing in her aura, and it made her sweeter, even more charming, and so difficult to resist. He wanted to believe her, even though his instinct reacted otherwise.

When she closed the door to the cab at the airport, he could feel his entire world shatter to pieces.

Starting from the depths

“We all have to start from somewhere…” were the last words he remembered from another strange dream before he woke up in sweat at almost noon. Lately he was sleeping a lot. And he had no energy or desire to clean up his house.

His aunt likened him to a troglodyte when she passed by one day to drop off some food.

At least he was eating well. But that didn’t matter if he wasn’t feeding his soul.

He needed to find a way to get back on track, to exercise both body and mind.

Also part of Weekend Writing Prompt #189

The truth of lucid dreams

The uncontrollable capacity to feel everything so deeply often deprives you of nocturnal sleep.

Because the lucid dreams you have make reality and imagination a blurred existence, which you cannot separate.

But when you wake, you know exactly where you want to be.

Also part of Weekend Writing Prompt #179

Tired Souls

Techniques to fight insomnia or to ensure you get “a good night’s sleep” are usually similar with techniques to relax. It’s the things ‘life coaches’/’instructors’ and the likes fill your mind with and they very often center around one thing: letting go of whatever thoughts are troubling your mind.

The idea is to focus on something else if on nothing at all is not possible.

To stare into the star-filled sky, take a long walk, absorb your attention into something different that will also get you tired, and steadily push aside what is causing your anxiety to skyrocket.

Fix your posture.

Breathe.

Relax.

For all of us, there are some nights when falling – and staying – asleep is difficult. The mind is not an easy thing to control. It remembers things at random moments and shoves them right in front of you when you least want them to appear. And it wakes up when all you desire is to shut down.

Just remember, sleep doesn’t help if it’s your soul that’s tired.

And that’s when you need to take care of you first and foremost.

No news is not a fact

You know that feeling when you go to bed at night at a decent hour, tired but satisfied with what you’ve accomplished, and then wake up the next morning refreshed and ready to actively engage in a full day ahead? Could you describe what that feels like please? Because in our hectic lives, this all sounds like a luxury. Being able to go to sleep early and wake up having adequately rested.

These current times are interesting in many ways – in the fact that revolutionary movements spur to life, that innovations succeed one another faster than you realise, that societies strive to become more open-minded, that politics reveals just how dirty a game it can be, and terrorism overshadows the entire globe. Everything seems to evolve so rapidly that you sleep-in for a few hours more, and wake up feeling you lost an entire year due to all the things that have happened: violent massacres, gruesome juvenile crimes, train accidents, lost airplanes, mass shootings, explosions, financial crises, political elections, the emergence of radical movements, and so much more than you could ever imagine.

We have reached such a point that when we read fewer than five items of news per day, we begin to worry that we missed something. It’s that feeling when all of a sudden your heart begins to pump faster and anxiety overwhelms you, because you are almost certain there is something you didn’t see or you haven’t heard of. It’s like the restless calm before the storm; when you know that the next day will definitely contain a shower of news headlines to compensate the fewer ones the day before.

But all of this is exhausting. Not only for people who have to cover the news. But for everyone who reads and listens to it. It is physically and mentally stressful to hear all this negativity span our lives. To constantly add to the stress of contemporary living and to know that things will hardly get any better.

So how do you manage this situation? Probably in the only way you can: with a nap whenever possible. Because you may feel strong and able, but after a while, your organism itself will begin to call on you – through headaches that turn into migraines, upset stomach, and drowsiness – sounding an internal alarm that you need to slow down, rest and maybe even hit pause. The news will happen whether you chase it or not. And unless you have some kind of superpower, there is little you can do to change that.

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Struggle

Bulletproof

She woke up enveloped in her fluffy quilt. It was snowing outside, which resulted in it being freezing cold inside. It is strange, though, how she woke up far sleepier than when she went to bed late the night before. She decided to roll over and snooze the alarm clock one more time. But she had managed to wrap herself so tightly in the quilt that she couldn’t really move. It was easy to fall back asleep in the warmth of a comfortable bed.

The alarm clock buzzed for the third and last time.

Ashley knew that if she allowed herself to sleep through this one too, she would never get up in time. Andrew had challenged her to a cross-fit session that morning. She presumed it would be more fun if she went with a friend, and at least she might even go back for more after this one. Gyms were obviously not her favourite place.

But how do you convince yourself to get up in all that cold?

An email bleeped on her phone. The first thing she thought after reading it was that stupidity is everywhere. She was wide awake from aggravation as the message simply further demonstrated the incompetence of certain people who lack the capacity of comprehending their own limits and faults. She got up instantly and within half an hour was out of the door.

Working out does help your psychology. Because for that hour you are there, you manage to forget everything else. You become bulletproof. You are allowed to take out all your rage and aggravation, peaking your adrenaline levels, and then all of a sudden you feel so calm, as if nothing ever happened to distress you in the first place. It is certainly true what they say, that a healthy mind lives better in a healthy body, because it is not only about being physically fit that is important. It is about being happy about it too. About maintaining the proper attitude to be able to ignore certain things. To not allow trivial stuff to strike at your nerves. It is about reinforcing your organism’s shielding capacity and boosting your own mentality.

That way, even on freezing days, you can find the courage and determination to get out of bed, because you never know what an amazing day may lie ahead for you.

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Ready, Set, Done

Lesson of the day

You know that feeling you get towards the end of the day, when you realise that going to bed late the previous night was a bad idea? It’s because the tiredness catches up with you and you’re suddenly drained, to the extent that even coffee makes you sleepy now.

It’s nice exploiting to the fullest every waking hour you have. So much, that you are even out of the country and back during the week without anyone realizing. Or to the point that you have taken multitasking to another level with the amount of things you do.

But there is one thing that you need to run all of this: just like an engine needs fuel, you need sleep. And it is not easy. Because when you finally get comfortable and curl up in bed, you suddenly remember everything you need to do and become wide awake again. In a vicious-circle-like phase, you’ll be back to feeling sleepy the next afternoon, right in the middle of all those things you just mentally noted you need to complete.

Whatever the case, we all need to find a few extra hours to catch up on this vital life process. You’ll hear a lot about what sleep deprivation can do – increase your need for food, add extra pounds, encourage wrinkles, diminish your memory. Most of all, you won’t be able to fully process everything you are so actively engaged in, if you are not adequately rested and awake to enjoy them!

An instant switch

It’s called rolling back instantly. At least that was what Helga used to call it. Her grandmother told her it was a trait inherited from the women’s part of the family.

It usually came more abruptly during those hectic days, when Helga was multitasking beyond her stress capacity. When she was constantly running around with things to do, filling up her diary with post-its just so she wouldn’t forget anything, and never being able to reduce her to-do list. It was those days when she didn’t even have time to think. But once the storm passed and things quietened down to normal (breathing) rhythms, Helga’s mind began to wander again.

And that is when it struck.

That sinking feeling that switched her mood from feeling like a queen bee to feeling like a homeless pauper. All in less than a second. It all happened so fast, none of her friends ever understood how someone could change emotions so rapidly.

But it happened.

It was because when she finally relaxed – be it after a warm bath or a proper meal – that is the moment when her body began to catch up with her. That is when the tiredness sunk in, when the exhaustion hit her nervous system, and when her brain was calling for a temporary, but immediate, shut down in order to recuperate.

It didn’t last too long – maybe until the next day – but all she could do when it happened was try to relax and simply go to bed. Crawl under the covers and allow herself those few precious hours of literally not thinking about anything else other than what Morpheus brought along.

Also part of Daily Prompt: Mountaintops and Valleys