Sleep.

Sunday, 1:19 AM

I want to count this as Saturday's, because it's getting harder to define my sense of time to societal standards. I mean, if I sleep at 6 am, wake up for work at 1 pm, and spend a night catching up with someone in my hall, it's like I'm going through the motions of a "standard" day: school, work, etc. So in reality, right now it's like I'm kicking back after my 9 to 5, you know?

I screwed up my sleeping habits a long time ago. I want to emphasize that, because it feels like the last time I slept normally was in another life ago. When I was a kid, I'd sleep the normal 8 hours, from 10 pm to 6 am. I'd always be jealous of everyone else, because they'd sleep so much later. I felt like I was missing out on life, since television became much more risque after a certain time. In middle school, I'd spend my weekends sleeping at 1 am until 10 am. It was there that I discovered cheesy sci-fi flicks, comedy that centered around scatology, and censored advertisements for Girls Gone Wild videos. It was during high school, however, when I truly started to value sleep.

It was during high school in which I started to sleep irregularly. My workload had increased exponentially since middle school. School took on such an importance, in that it became much less an activity in which I could enjoy learning, and much more an avenue to a prestigious college and subsequently, the determinant towards my future. I would start my homework late due to a reluctance to confront my academics; it seemed too soon for a career to start creeping up, and I wanted to enjoy my responsibilities for just a little bit longer. I'd finish my homework at 1 am, but when I would lay down in bed I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes vestiges of my potential future would drift across the planes of my mind, keeping me from sleep. I was so anxious about whatever could possibly go wrong the next day, that something that could cause me to miss an opportunity to get into a excellent college, that I'd spend whole nights obsessed with ensuring a comfortable future. I didn't want to be proven a loser.

And so high school came and left, with me living through sleepless nights and mundane dreams in the day. When I went through school, it was like I was outside my own body, watching a little lifeless me bubble in answers, scribble down words, and commit notes into his brain. College came, and for a little bit I slept well. At that point, I had been falling asleep so awfully, that I would sleep through classes to try to make up for my deficit of rest. I felt that I deserved it. My grades, however, went one point down of what it was in high school, and they were met with the frustration and disappointment of my family. Whole nights screaming at me for squandering my potential, for being unable to perform to my fullest, for my inevitable descent into unemployment attributed to a low GPA and worse, a major in the humanities.

There are times in which I question my self-worth, when a filthy specter dwells inches above my face every time I rest my head on my pillow. He breathes heavily, his hot gasps blanketing my face, being inhaled by my nostrils. His whispers keep reminding me of the nature of life, of how it is anything but provisional. Every single second not committed to something is wasted. You can sacrifice your present for a better future. But when you're living every single day with thoughts of destitution nipping at your heels, it makes you very unenthusiastic for tomorrow to come. Sometimes you just want to curl up into a ball and sleep. I know that I shouldn't let these thoughts drag me down. And I'm starting not to. At the very least, that whisper, that horrible voice, can be drowned out in the white noise of our dreams. Those ethereal moments, falling like snow on our perception of reality, until tomorrow is covered in white, becoming a blank canvas to try again on. Tomorrow is a new day, and I need to realize that, so I can fall asleep peacefully, instead of dreading what the next day can bring.