MY OWN WALKING - Journal October 2023

Currently both Hubby and I are running bit of a sleep deficit. Sometimes up at two, three o'clock in the morning, only on rare ocassions sleeping a full night. The summer heat and humidity has never been great for my sleep. Well, to be honest, nothing much is great for it. Body too hot, body too cold, body too achy, too much light, too stormy, too windy, too rainy, too damp, too low or too high the barometric pressure. It might be said that blaming ones lack of sleep entirely on external circumstances, though understandable, convenient even, is very far from the whole story.

I've always been a restless sleeper. My Mother used to say I could destroy a well made bed over night. But, however restless, I dont remember lacking sleep in my youth. Once I started working fulltime it changed. By the 1980's, I was living and working in London. In the early 80's recession I was made redundant twice in the space of a couple of years. I moved from one rented room to another far too many times to remember now. I was in my mid twenties. After leaving college, nothing felt to have gone according to even the most sketchy of plans. I'd been trying out all sorts of new things hoping to discover a fresh direction creatively. I brushed under the carpet any sense I might have had at the time, of having failed. I was, nonetheless, living an unsettled life. This was the point when the length of sleep began to become more erratic.  I've struggled to get sufficient sleep ever since. Our tiredness can be the bodies way of curtailing the constant driven sense of running - mostly on the spot.

Tiredness is never simply the physical manifestation of a lack of sleep. Lack of sleep also has a mental and emotional mattress it rests on. One that has become so uncomfortable you are unable to sleep the sleep of the righteous. The very spirit of sleep itself is disturbed, turning uneasily beneath the duvet. Feeling tired all the time is fundamentally a manifestatìon of an inner spiritual malaise. One where we do toss and turn at night, trying and usually failing to resolve dilemmas and emotional conflicts. Hence we awaken in the morning tired out by our nightly exertions, and yet more depleted. Its a type of perverse feedback loop. If only we could wish or will ourselves to sleep. In my experience lack of sleep hygiene is rarely the primary cause.

Dr Johnson's maxim that anyone ' who is tired of London is tired of life" was spoken in a different era, and of a different London, to our own. Though I think it contains a wider application - for if you are ' tired of anything, you are tired of life'. One can become tired of the way your life is, or has become. And though one might wish to change it, it may not feel or be that simple. We can be caught in circumstances, or consequences of decisions and commitments, either beyond our control, or quite difficult to extricate ourselves from. Its not always that easy to just walk away. This lack of ease in achieving any resolution, can feed into the restlessness and anxiety that results in the decimation of rejuvinating sleep.

And that lack of sleep then begins to play a more pro-active role. It turns into a worry in itself. You constantly read articles on the effect lack of sleep has on ones general fitness. You find yourself eating poorer quality junk food, high in sugar, fats and process. Food can be a coping mechanism, one that provides a short term hit of energy or comfort, before you need more of it. Even though you know its not good for you, you can't resist, even as the pounds pile on, and your waist size expands. You exercise either not at all, or obsessively to the point of neurotic exhaustion.

Whilst tiredness plays a huge role in our physical health, it also has a detrimental effect on our mental health? through increased sensitivity, moodiness, brain function, forgetfulness, depression and eventually dementia. Not to mention the longevity of your life. Blimey, talk about piling on the agony. This taps into another aspect of sleeplessness - existential worries about our mortality. About falling asleep and never waking up again.

Tiredness and lack of sleep could be read as a garbled message from our sub conscious, concerning something we'd rather not see. This may be existential in nature. It maybe time feels like its running out for happiness or fulfillment. It could be an insight into oneself, of what one really wants from life, that you are perhaps resistant to fully acknowledge. 

Most of the time we are just about coping, making it through another day relatively unscathed. Getting home, we then kill time till you can reasonably go to bed. There is often not much energy left of an evening to do anything you find creatively fulfilling or meaningful. Tiredness feeding into ones desire to be vague, switch off and vegetate. For should you stop to investigate your tiredness, there is a lot more that could unravel than the insufficient number of hours spent asleep.