Thursday morning. It must have been around 6am. I woke up, still a little sleepy, and figured that the birds would be starting to chirp at any moment…
I lay there, slowly waking more and more with each passing moment. Waiting for the birds.
Within a few minutes I was wide awake. I checked the clock – 3.30am. What? How could I be wide awake at 3.30am? That time of day doesn’t even exist for me – I am, even at the worst of times, a very good sleeper. Finding myself awake at a time when the BFG would have just wrapped up his dream catching was a little disconcerting. And so I lay there in the pitch black darkness, staring at the ceiling that I couldn’t see (due to the aforementioned pitch black darkness), thinking about how weird it was that I felt so awake.
I gave it a good half an hour of trying to get back to sleep, all the while listening to Joel breathing in and out – slow and steady deep-sleep breaths – and being totally jealous of his uninterrupted slumber. I eventually realised there was not going to be any nodding-off in my immediate future, so I hauled myself out of bed and went into the lounge where I’d at least be able to turn on the light in order to actually see a ceiling. And that’s what I did for the next hour. I stared at the ceiling. And the walls. And the floor. And the coffee table. I refused to turn on the TV or open my laptop, because I feared that would somehow constitute the actual start of my day. As long as I kept just staring at flat surfaces I figured I was in a weird no-man’s-land of existence.
Thankfully my eyelids grew heavy just before 5am, and I gratefully sank back into bed where I drifted easily into two more hours of sleep.
That day at work was shit to say the least. I was so tired when I woke to face the day that I couldn’t be arsed putting even the slightest effort into my appearance. That meant comfy clothes (read: unflattering) and no make up – a look more suited to doing the housework than heading to actual work. The interruption to my night plagued me throughout the day, manifesting itself in my inability to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, and my repeatedly getting words all jumbled up every time I opened my mouth.
Generally speaking, I don’t get enough sleep. I am always tired after work, but I seem to get a second wind around 8pm at which point I’ll kick into some baking, or telly, or serious internetting… most nights I’m still awake come midnight. So yeah, even though sleep is my true love, we really don’t spend as much time together as we should. Despite going to bed late, I can usually get through the work day without issue. I can most often focus on what I’m doing, get the job done, throw around a few witty lines, and then head home. But actually waking up after I’ve already been in a deep sleep and not being able to get back there? That’s some next-level mindscrew that actually dropkicks your world for the next twenty-four hours.
I do not recommend it. And I’m pissed off that it happened again last night.







