Something Better

"I hope you get sleep this weekend. In fact, I'm going to pray to that end. You really need some sleep." 

Those were the words my friend left me with on a Friday afternoon at the end of our work day. She was right. I did need sleep. I'd been exhausted for weeks, making it through the work day but upon arriving home falling asleep on the couch as soon as I'd finished eating dinner (or, more and more often, while eating dinner) only to wake a few hours later, drag myself to bed, and then struggle and fail to fall back to sleep as my brain spun through thoughts and feelings that I couldn't put into words, all too much like a car spinning its wheels in a muddy ditch, getting more stuck the more the wheels spun, going nowhere while sinking deeper and deeper into the mud.

Every moment of every day had begun to feel like I was swimming through emotional molasses, unable to process how I felt. Because playing the part of agreeable co-worker was a mask that was becoming too heavy to continue to bear. And because the non-work hours that weren't plagued by post-work fatigue were filled with the necessarily solo process of attempting to un-puzzle my brain as I reflect and re-reflect and analyze my daily experiences given what I've learned about brain wiring over the last couple of years. In short, I was spent.

My friend was right that I needed sleep, but it struck me that day when she said that she would add it to her prayers. Not because the concept was out of character for her; I know that her faith and church involvement are central to her life in a genuine way. It's just not something that we ever really talk about on a personal level. And her words - and the energy around them - seemed to hint at a level of concern, like she had sensed the same shift that I'd felt in myself over the preceding weeks.

My friend was right that I needed sleep, but what had to come first was processing the substance of that emotional molasses that I was swimming through. Verbal processor that I am, I'd usually talk about it at other people until I figured out what was going on in my head, but with therapists untrustworthy (long story) and friends too close to the core issues, I was out of luck - not that I'd been able to find the words anyway. These were the kinds of feelings that I'd once written about, spinning words for hours on end, often creating not much more than nonsense until I'd gotten whatever it was out of my system - but that was a lifetime ago. Before that therapist who'd known me all of 15-20 minutes shut down my mere mention of using journaling as a coping tool, saying that she didn't like her clients to write about things because they'd just make things worse. Before the years of guilt that plagued my every attempt at writing. Before the recent years of attempting to write only to find no words. Before I'd given up on regaining the ability to write the way I once had, the way that had once been so core to my identity.

My friend was right that I needed sleep, but instead that Friday evening I went home, and I started to write. I wrote again on Saturday. And again on Sunday. It didn't lead me to any conclusions. And I still couldn't define any emotions. But the molasses I'd been swimming through began to drain, and I wrote away the feeling of heaviness.

In a busy, stressful stretch at work late last year, a different work friend had shared with me his whole-hearted belief that sometimes when God doesn't answer our prayers the way that we'd hoped, it's because he has something better in store for us. It was just one of the regular, mini conversational sermons that he's shared with me in the time I've known him, but for whatever reason, that one stuck with me differently. And on that Friday in question? A friend had prayed that I'd finally get some sleep, and while that night sleep began to come more quickly and ceased to be plagued by the kinds of stress dreams that made my days blur together, I didn't actually get more sleep. In fact, I definitely got less because writing brain? Total night owl. (Case in point: Draft #1 of this post was written between the hours of 2am and 3am.) She'd prayed that I'd get some sleep, but what I got? What I got was writing - and writing brought me rest. Writing brought me an energy I haven't felt in years. It brought feeling like myself in a way that I haven't in years. So that more sleep thing? That will come eventually. But writing? So much better.