Insomnia Chronicles

JESS LIAO

On the discomfort of sleepless nights & on making peace

I’m an insomniac. It took me a long time to admit it to myself. I’ve just struggled with sleep every now and then, I’d say. Or, I’m a light sleeper and it just takes me longer than normal people to be able to fall asleep. I realised that those words were phrases I’d been using for over a decade.

I’d pick my cuticles until they bled, sitting on my hands, and fidgeting on the blue plastic seats.

“Here’s a prescription for diazepam. They’re highly addictive, and we have an entire generation addicted to them. It should knock you out in 30 minutes.” The doctor peered at me through thick rimmed glasses on the brink of his nose, scrawling away on a piece of paper.

I’m definitely an insomniac. I went to the discount pharmacy, handed the slip across the counter, and picked up my medication.

To my joy, the diazepam didn’t even work.

A by-product of insomnia is that it gives you plenty of time to lie there and think. Here are some musings I’ve had to – and am still trying to – learn as I try to make peace with my insomnia: I don’t need to stay up all night as a way of punishing myself.

And if I do have a bad night, I don’t need to punish myself during it. A few years ago, my actions would have spoken exactly the opposite. I used to have a crippling, deeply ingrained view that overworking myself would be a way to validate my own sense of worthiness. It would be noble to work three times as hard, to have five more hours of the evening to do more work. I was trained that way from childhood, and I was addicted. I knew staying up all night would harm my body and I would feel the after-effects of a sleepless night the next morning. If I’m putting my body through this, I thought, then I might as well make use of the time by working till my eyes dry out and I begin to feel nauseous.

As I’ve made peace with my unhealthy obsession with working, I realised that it’s okay to lay there and sit with my thoughts. It’s okay – even if it’s 3:30am onin an anxious night filled with shuffling my pillow to the other side and moving my weighted blanket to cradle me in the right positions – to get up and make a cup of chamomile tea.

Insomnia will make you feel awful, in physical and mental ways. It makes me feel more out of control and it affects the way I see myself. I’ve prided myself on being high functioning; and when insomnia takes reign, it distresses me so much because it debilitates my sense of self. In my mind, a highfunctioning person goes to bed around 10 or 11pm, sleeps a sturdy eight hours and wakes up no later than 8:30am. A green juice and a morning flow of yoga would also be ideal. If I woke up at midday, I would wake abruptly and with instant pangs of guilt. It took a visit to the psychologist for her to tell me “It’s not morally wrong to have a different sleep cycle to others – like, shift workers. They’re not wrong in the slightest for having to sleep through the day or have different patterns of sleep. It just looks different.”

Insomnia is hard and uncomfortable, but it’s also not the worst. It does mean the day ahead is more daunting and far harder. It does mean I can’t concentrate as much, and I won’t be able to check off as many tasks as I would have liked to. But I’ll get through the day okay and at the end of it I’ll still have done the one or two most important things that I needed to get done.

Sometimes it’s okay to disappoint others. I’m a chronic people pleaser. Insomnia has meant I’ve had to cancel countless hangouts with people, miss a few appointments and struggle to make it in time for a 9am tutorial. I’ve been late to all sorts of things because of it. But people are generally kinder and more forgiving than I am on myself. They will lend a hand of grace and it reminds me that I’m finite and I can’t do it all; that I’m human. On the other hand, I’ve been able to master the skill of getting out of the house in a matter of 7 minutes.

In high school I would sit on the toilet, brush my hair with my left hand and my teeth with my right hand. All whilst my toast was in the toaster and the kettle was boiling away. Maybe I’ve finished a book about the history of humanity at 2am, a crime thriller by 4 and by 7:30 in the morning, I’ve probably learnt how to sew. I was a blur of delirious sleeplessness. I don’t mean to glamourise or romanticise it, not in the slightest. I mean that I’ve come to make peace with it and my lack of control over it. Sometimes, no matter how good of a night routine I have and how well I’ve practiced “sleep hygiene,” insomnia might just be out of my hands.

Making peace with the discomfort of insomnia has been the first step forward. No matter how many bad nights in a row, I still am hopeful that maybe tonight will be an okay one. If not, then I know it will still be okay – but just in a different way.