For the past two years, I haven’t been able to sleep for more than five hours straight. The feeling of “falling asleep and waking up to the morning light” has become nothing more than a distant memory.
Last night, drowsiness set in around 9 PM, and I drifted off naturally. But by midnight, I was awake again. Groggily, I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. When I returned to bed, the sleepiness I had felt earlier was gone, leaving me staring into the darkness.
Still, perhaps because my parasympathetic nervous system was still dominant from just having been asleep, I managed to doze off for another hour.
Then, once again, I woke up. And once again, I went to the bathroom. This time, I hesitated before checking the time. “Please, let it be 6 AM already,” I silently pleaded as I picked up my phone. But the screen displayed a cruel truth—4:00 AM. A wave of despair washed over me.
There were still two hours until my scheduled wake-up time. Should I just get up now? Or should I force myself to try sleeping again? As I debated, the urge to go to the bathroom returned, and with a sigh, I got out of bed once more.
By this point, my body was awake. Having spent the night in fragmented, restless sleep, I could no longer easily drift back into unconsciousness. Instead, I lingered in a hazy state between wakefulness and sleep, lost in the passage of time, until the clock finally struck 6 AM.
Despite waking up multiple times, I had made it through the night without relying on sleeping pills. If I had to score my sleep, I suppose I’d give it… a 90 out of 100.
