For as long as I can remember, I’ve not been able to sleep “early”. Even as a kid growing up, I couldn’t get to sleep at “recommended” times, and this would continue into my adulthood.
Way back in 2012, I remember spending almost entire nights wide awake. The boys in the dormitory would be sound asleep and I’d hear them dreaming, but I wouldn’t bat an eye until 5.30 AM when the waking-up bell rang. Of course this wouldn’t happen every night, but as I continued into my later teen years, I would never sleep until at least past 12.30 AM every single night, no matter how hard I tried.🤒
As a secondary school student with an active lifestyle, I learnt to devote late night hours to studying and doing laundry. I’d go to bed at around 1.00 AM and wake up at 5.00 AM, while my peers often went to bed at 10.30 or 11.00 PM and would wake at 4.00 AM.
When it became semi-mandatory to wake up for morning studies, I’d hardly grasp a thing from the dawn lectures, and my mind would adjust to scholastic occupation from 7.00 AM, or until after the 8.30 AM school assembly.
Despite my “unconventional” school sleep schedule, I still caught up with educational demands, and did not dull at my academic or co-curricular performance, and as far as I’m concerned, my social life was almost at par with my peer’s, despite it tending to lean towards the somewhat “weird” side. Sometimes I’d be socially awkward, other times I’d be awkwardly social.
Today as a young adult, I still have to deal with keeping late, not because I want it nor because I enjoy it, but because I simply can’t help it. For the last one year or more, I’ve never gone to bed before 1.00 AM. A few times last year, I stayed awake all night, tossing and turning until sunrise without catching even a half a wink of sleep. I fully understand the serious health risks that come as a result of not getting enough night sleep, and as often as I can, I try to catch a short nap during the day, if I can afford it. Still, I fear that mine might not be a full lifespan, and this thought keeps me awake all night (sigh). 🤔
I cannot fully confirm if it is a sleeping disorder that keeps me up, and I hope to involve some expert to look into this “issue”. 🤷🏽♀️
However, I can describe these night hours as the most peaceful on earth. During these silent hours, I’ve often been able to achieve a pure form of mental clarity that has enabled me to get answers to many questions, and also create questions for the puzzles of life. I have realised many a “Eureka!” moment, and several “a-ha!”s have been exclaimed in the lonely hours of the night upon the discovery of some answer to a mystery, like that time when I realised that because I was born just 4 days into the present millennium, I had been alive in the 1990s! 😀
Sometimes I wake up to wash my clothes, or tidy up and arrange things, or eat.
It is during these times that I’m able to write quite properly about things that interest me, or do assignments should I have any.
The only thing that seems to induce my sleeping process is if I take to read a good nonfiction book, and The American Intellectual Tradition, Vol. 1, has been a pretty good sleep-inducing catalyst for the past couple of months. 📚
