Permission to Sleep

Image credit: Photo by Ekler on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

I have always loved the end of the day, when everyone else is asleep and I can finally be alone with my thoughts. When I was a child, I would fight sleep so that I could spend more time indulging in the wonderful escape of daydream and fantasy; I would feel myself drifting off and jerk myself awake to come back to some thread of a story I was telling myself. As I grew older, and especially after I had kids, I'd spend my evenings waiting for the world to fall asleep so that my work could end and my own time begin. At last I could answer e-mail, read a book, take a shower, watch TV, eat a slow and leisurely dessert. No one wanted anything from me anymore, so the tiring pull at me was gone. I could finally let myself think about and take care of my own wants and needs now that everyone else was taken care of and couldn't possibly ask for anything else. But there was still one major, glaring omission in my after-hours self care regimen: sleep.

I am horribly, chronically sleep deprived. I have been for years. I know I don't get enough sleep. I know I function better the next day — am a better person, better parent, better partner, better friend — with more sleep, and yet I can't seem to let go of pushing myself to stay awake and savor that time alone, just like I did as a child.

The past few weeks have been difficult for my husband at work, and his project has spilled over into evenings and weekends. He warned me ahead of time that this might be the case, and I gave myself mental permission to take things easy. Earlier this week, I took steps to line up playdates and childcare for the kids to give myself a little respite this weekend. And for the last few days, I've found that at the end of the day I'm tired and ready to sleep without pushing to do one more thing and one more thing. I've gone to bed at a (for me) reasonable hour. I've gotten seven or eight hours of sleep. Having taken care of myself during the day, I just haven't felt the need to push further and further into the night to get what I've deprived myself of all day. I've given myself enough to give myself permission to sleep. It feels like a tightly coiled spring inside me has released.

And having said that, I've done all I intended for today too and am going to sleep.

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This post was originally posted at The Second Road.