I’ve never had problems sleeping. I’ve always loved it and I’ve always been very good at it. I can go to bed early and sleep through the night. I can wake up early in a good mood. I can sleep late with the latest of sleepers. I can nap in the middle of the day. I sleep like a rock on Ukrainian trains and sometimes, if the stars align, I can even get in a quick nap on a Ukrainian bus.
Sleep and I have always had a sweet, uncomplicated relationship.
But in the last few years, sleep has become a bit more cantankerous, a bit more unreliable than it used to be. I’d like to blame it all on sleep, but of course it’s not that simple. It never is, right? If sleep and I were having a break-up conversation, sleep would probably say something like, “it’s not you…it’s me…” But the truth of the matter is, it’s not sleep, it’s me.
And I suppose I’m glossing over a few of the troubled spots in my relationship with sleep when I forget about the periods in my life when I’ve been the most stressed. In most recent history, that would be the period of time before I left for Ukraine. It’s almost funny, really, when I look back on what I wrote here in September, 2009:
These days, when I have even the slightest bit of a hard time falling asleep, I’m doomed. My mind begins to race and I can’t shut it off for long enough to fall asleep, no matter how tired I am. I can’t stop myself from adding about this mental list I’ve had going for the last three or four months (titled: “Things to take care of before I leave the country”) or I won’t be able to quit thinking about what it’ll be like in Ukraine. What it’ll be like to be apart from my family and friends for so long. Whether I’ll have enough money, enough stuff, whether I should pack more or less. All of these things and more.
When I was lying in bed tonight, tossing and turning, trying to sleep, I remembered the trouble I had sleeping just before I left for Ukraine. And that’s what prompted me to get up and write. When I looked back over what I wrote those last few weeks before I left, I had to laugh at how much I’ve forgotten. It should be no surprise, but it turns out I worry myself in the exact same way over and over again. My current mental list is literally titled “Things to look into for my future life in America or Elsewhere.” And my current preoccupations are more or less exactly the same.
For some reason, though, the stakes these days feel higher. I know they aren’t — I’m still me, I’m living the same life I always lived, things will all work out fine. But it’s hard to convince myself of that at midnight, or at 2:00 in the morning, when I’m still rolling around in bed, thinking about where I’ll be sleeping in seven months. It’s hard to get back to sleep when I wake up at 7:00 on a Sunday morning, and as tight as I squeeze my eyes, I can’t get rid of the shadowy list of things to do that lurks in the depths of my mind.
In just a few weeks, I’ll be 27 years old. Ten years ago, I thought that when I was 27 I’d be married, maybe even have a kid. I don’t remember what else I thought I’d be doing, but I certainly didn’t think I wouldn’t know. And I don’t. I have no clue what I’m doing after I leave Ukraine. I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what I’m going to do, and I don’t really even know how to figure it all out. I know I will, but that’s really about all that I know. I never thought I’d be 27 years old and this clueless and what to do next.
It turns out things aren’t so different than they were two and a half years ago. The same things still scare me — I don’t know where I’ll be living, I don’t know what I’ll be doing, I don’t know if I’ll have friends or not.
And the rational part of my brain says, “Look, silly! Those things scared you when you were 17 and trying to decide where to go to college…and then again when you were 22 and deciding what to do after you graduated from college…and then again when you were 23 and making the decision to join the Peace Corps. And that all turned out fine. Time and time again it turned out fine. So what are you doing losing sleep over it??”
But the freaked-out little kid who resides in the soft, mushy part of my brain just responds with nervous, clenched fists and panic, and it’s difficult to calm her down.
And so I did the same thing I did two years and four months ago. I got up, turned on my computer, and turned on the song “Big Country,” which has a magical ability to calm me down. And I read that blog post from two years and four months ago, and although I’m worried about slightly different things tonight than I was then, it helps looking back, having this record of what made me so afraid then and knowing so resolutely that I had nothing to be afraid of.
It’s comical, almost. I suppose no matter how old I get, I’ll be afraid of things that I can’t control and scared of the unknown. But maybe at some point, having gone through the experience of surviving the unknown and successfully enduring all the things I can’t control again and again, I’ll learn my lesson and get a little more sleep at night. It might be a little too late for tonight, but maybe tomorrow sleep will be able to remind me of that friendly, gentle relationships we’ve enjoyed for so many years and we’ll get a chance to spend some more time together.
