All my life I’ve had a love-hate relationship with
sleep. Always feast or famine, never balance. I could elaborate, but right now
I need to get this out.
I overslept this morning. This is a minor disaster
for me.
I went to bed at 22:15 and slept through my alarm,
woke up at 11:45, called work to explain that my doctor’s appointment was
running long (the appointment that I had just slept through) and rushed in 45
minutes late. I stayed an extra hour to try and quiet my self-flagellation. It’s
almost 18:00 and I’m still feeling that disorientation I get whenever this
happens. It occurs to me that:
- I have this overdeveloped sense of responsibility
- My sense of self-worth is strongly linked to my work ethic, and all the baggage that comes in that particular package
- I’ve been this way, be it nature or nurture or both, since far too early on in life
- The pressure of trying to live up to this ideal was a major factor in my alcoholism and continues to be a factor in mental health problems today
- Not showing up on time for planned commitments is practically the dictionary definition of irresponsibility
- I was not sleep deprived or otherwise compromised in any way to suggest that I might have needed more rest today
- I never heard the alarm blaring in my ear for however long it goes before it finally shuts itself off, nor did I feel Eli walking up and down my body to make me get up and feed them, nor did I hear any of them vomiting all the way from the foot of my bed right on down the hallway and into the kitchen. (Sadly, this has become a pretty regular thing)
I’m honestly not really sure why I woke up exactly when
I did, to my knowledge I didn’t have any control whatsoever over any of it. And
that’s the problem, right there. It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do, it
doesn’t matter how hard I try, I have no control over
it. And it’s impossible to explain this to people. Or at least it feels like it
is. So I lie because I’m ashamed to look irresponsible and I can sell my lie
far better than the shameful truth.
I’m trying to make peace with it by writing this
because I have to accept the truth of this for
myself if I ever want to be able to
expect another person to understand. That way, if they don’t understand, (which
is a distinct possibility), I can still be at peace knowing I did my best. Is
that crazy?
