Sleep Deprived Mama

Sleep deprivation feels like…

Being alone. Alone in the dark. Possibly the only one awake in the world.

It aches. With stinging eyes, a knotted back, and a body craving rest.

It feels like calculating every minute of sleep I’ve had and trying to mash it all together into some semblance of restoration. Squinting at the numbers and pretending it’s enough to get through the day.

It feels like I may actually forget how to sleep. For how can one go so many nights interrupted and then expect that they’d remember how to sleep again?

It’s feeling too tired to sleep at all. The rare moments of rest, as I lay there and watch them slip away, desperate to just F A L L A S L E E P. But the fatigue turns into a wiring that makes it impossible.

It’s the panic over never having enough rest. The sense of deficit that looms over me as I rise for each day.

It feels like being misunderstood. Like an invisible illness. Where people acknowledge that I’m tired or listen to my tale of a sleepless night, but very few seem to really get it. They don’t feel that sway in my body — the kind of nauseous little hum that follows me.

It feels like knowing hours of the night that I don’t want to know. Seeing the numbers on the clock and feeling time slowly inch by when I’d rather just shut my eyes and skip it.

Sleep deprivation can feel like torture, because it is torture. It can turn me rageful, weepy, completely delirious.

And what a complicated place to find myself. When the reason for my being up all night is the little being in my arms.

The little love of my life who I’d give sleep away forever for.