Insomniac Turned Dreamer

As a middle-aged early bird, I admit that I rarely see the midnight hours these days. However, living in a Mediterranean culture, my early to bed - early to rise pattern makes it challenging to fully embrace dinner engagements that are set to begin at 9pm — when I am usually washing my face and looking forward to sliding under the warm covers for a wonderful, minimum eight-hour slumber - usually getting more like nine or ten hours of dream time. Sleep is probably my main motivator in getting through the day, if I am completely honest.

Now, some might think that I’m crazy or even suggest that I sound like I’m depressed. After all, who in their right and happy mind wants to be in bed so early when there is so much going on at night, let alone can manage to make it happen?

Believe it or not, up until my late 30s, I was a regular insomniac. As a child, I would stay up reading books until the literary escapes offered me respite from the conscious world. In college, insomnia helped me to fit in by spending the wee early morning hours with peers. However, while they had to stay awake to finish the inevitably procrastinated report, I would merely just be there as a supportive alert friend who had already completed my reports days in advance. Later, in early adulthood, being able to function on little sleep was a badge of honor and respect as I went out salsa dancing late into the nights and then arrived early to work the following day on repeat, week after week. 

Seeing many midnights over those years created a sense of melancholy that I used to think fed my creativity. I thought that I needed to be in that state of haze between exhaustion and wakefulness.

What I didn’t realize was that I was avoiding what came in my dreams - my fears, my hopes, me.

It was when I started to focus on knowing myself that I discovered I no longer needed to run away from what the nighttime presented. I didn’t need to stay awake in fear of missing out. I didn’t need to run on fumes every day to prove I was worthy of respect. I didn’t need to avoid my dreams. In fact, if anything, I needed to embrace sleep to find out who I really am, within the safety of my own conscience.

When my eyes are closed and the space around me is still, I can process my day, think about actions I took or should take, decide next steps and breathe deeply. It is in the midnight hours that my mind drifts in and out of different realities that become tangible in my awakened state. Without my blissful sleep time, I am an unbalanced and discontent version of myself. A version of myself I do not want to be.

Still, as I said, I live in a Mediterranean climate now where there is a clear cultural divide between the local way of life and mine as an expat. They embrace the dark hours while I live in the light. I’m often reminded of the Morlocks and Elois from H.G. Well’s Time Machine, except my life is more like a Morlock despite living like an Eloi. I struggle to fully appreciate the late store openings that then close again for a three or four-hour lunch break followed by an afternoon open period until 7 or 8pm just before dinner time and evenings out. My love of being in bed at the changing of the days is keeping me from fully integrating into the country I have chosen to make my new home.

So, while I do not avoid an occasional night out that brings two days into one, I am still working to find a balance in embracing the richness of the culture around me that my insomniac self would have been so easy to enjoy, and meeting my needs for beauty rest so that I can turn my dreams into a very wonderful reality.