10Sleep

I don’t know how old I was when my fear of being alone in the dark began to recede. It did soften. I eventually stopped screaming for my mother. I learned how to lie still and hope that sleep would come..

But the fear never completely went away. It changed shape.

Instead of seeing objects move in the dark, my mind would find things to worry about. Problems to solve. Sleep became something I approached skeptally. Something I did not fully trust.

This has followed me all my life.

During the day, I am exuberant. Curious. Happy. I love ideas. I love people. I love thinking about the big questions of life — why we are here, what love is, how to grow, how to understand the mystery of being human.

But when it is time to sleep, something shifts. I close my eyes, and my mind becomes unsettled. It thinks about this and that. It revisits conversations. It tries to solve problems. It explores possibilities. It asks questions that have no easy answers. It does not want to turn off.

And always, somewhere in the background, there is a quiet fear that I will not fall asleep, but will lay tossing and turning all night and feel horrid the next day.  There is also the fear that when I let go — when I truly surrender to sleep — something bad might be unleashed. As if staying awake is a form of protection.

I don’t fully understand. I never have. It feels older than logic. It feels like a child’s instinct carried into adulthood. When I was small, darkness meant separation. It meant being alone. It meant the world might shift into something I could not control.

Now, even though I am grown, sleep still asks me to surrender. To release control. To trust.

And trust has always been the deeper lesson of my life.