Episode 18: The Sleep Pea

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing as well as you can be today. This week’s poem and episode unpack “revenge bedtime procrastination.” Perhaps most importantly, the poem and discussion challenge the colloquial understanding of this experience alongside its common coping mechanisms, questioning the environments that create such behaviour—beyond our intentions and self-regulation. The poem asks us to consider: is this a lack of self-control or am I trying to meet a need the only way I can in my present circumstances and environment?

I’ll share it with you now:

[ Every evening, ] 

[ each unbacked by ] 

[ afternoon caffeine ]

[ & cocktail hour (even on ]

no-school/no-work days), I sink deep into ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

dark, dense quiet: under fleecy sheets & safe blankets, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

atop these layered lines: four pillows & thirty (or so) pads of cloud foam & gel mattress. I’m perfectly punctual for my eight-hour sleep. No, I haven’t looked at my screens for over thirty minutes. I read a magazine. I stretched muscles I only found ten minutes ago. I meditated. But for some reason, I’m still holding the closing loop of the box breath (and no, I don’t have hiccups). Rather, I’m stuck on the inhale of an extra cycle and can’t let it go. My body bursts with uncracked glowsticks that could build a seven-eleven and perch it along a deserted two-lane backstretch at midnight. I can’t breathe out until I break their thin stakes. But I checked all the boxes, didn’t I? Didn’t I? Ah, I see. It’s not me. An enchanting, inviting sleep space doesn’t quite work—I don’t have the desire to sacrifice sleep that I must then counteract. When I excluded the context for the rest of my day (read: the rest of my life), you might have thought: “What’s wrong with this weirdo?” I’m stressed, overwhelmed, and overworked—seven to seven, then eight, nine, ten and counting to pay, eat, and make ends meet. I have no personal free time & because of this, I’m crushed by ache-fibred loneliness. When I crawl into bed, I wish the next day wouldn’t start so soon (or at all, honestly), so I stay awake—delay, delay, delay—absorbing & digesting succeeding four-minute-and-thirty-seven-second-ish chunks of YouTube at a time, to live another life vicariously (without needing to do the work of real relationships because I’m too exhausted for those) with my friends among their little streets of episodes and homes of scenes and edits and experiences (seemingly clipped just for the hole in my soul) that I’ve either seen before or have been barred from in-person. And as my eyelids clamp like clamshells I force them open again. It really is taking revenge, isn’t it? But not on daylight. You see, what if I’m not procrastinating? Here, perhaps I’m resilient—getting myself places to meet deprived needs and finding recovery time during my only free block of hours (though it’s shrinking), because I feel powerless to incite change where it's actually needed. Maybe it's not my failure or intention-behaviour-gap or self-regulation issues or inability to exert self-control. Maybe I’d sleep if my dreams could craft blueprints: a world where we talk about how we’ve internalized beliefs about coping with curating ‘healthy sleep hygiene’ and especially, how if we can’t, then it’s a character glitch. Maybe we’re responding to our lives appropriately. Because no matter how hard I try to squeeze myself between all these sentences, I feel the

pea.

Breathe the words in. What do they make you feel or think? How did they connect with your senses? What colours or symbols did you notice? What meaning did you draw? Metaphors? Interpretations? Clarity? Messages?