How to tell someone you are sleeping with you have a sleep routine
It’s three am and I’m living yet another completely fictitious, vivid, horror story. My mind whirls through the heated conversations my anxious brain rapidly concocts. My body tosses and turns and thumps and tightens. In a sea of linen and duck-down, nowhere is comfortable.
How can my body settle when my mind is living in the near-distant future called disaster and angst?
No. The story has escalated out of my rational control. My overactive imagination has created a scenario so real and so believable that it has triggered a panic attack. My skin is burning. The weight of the doona is grounding. I take deep breaths and try to return home.
Four am. Another night. I need to go to sleep now if I want three hours rest before work. Work is the reason it’s four am and I’m yet to go to sleep. Work will be gruelling because I’ve had no sleep. The cycle perpetuates.
It’s five am. Another morning. My alarm screams awake. I lift my impossibly heavy arm to silence the beast that I set with optimism. I wanted to gym. I love the gym. It helps me sleep. Yet it pulls me from the deepest slumber.
I’ve never been a good sleeper. Maybe as a baby, but as a cognitive human, not so much. Instead, I’ve been kept awake at boarding school by the soft yellow light of illegal Nokia 3015s or the gentle snores of thirteen-year-old girls. Kept awake at College by those who somehow kicked on later. Kept awake now by conversations from years ago, conversations yet to happen, conversations with myself about everything and nothing. After years of surviving on minimal sleep, I’d come to terms with the fact that I was just one of those people who survived on minimal sleep and multiple coffees.
But ha, fooled you. And myself. I’ve finally sorted my shit out. It’s taken years of trial and error, minute changes here and there, but now I can do it! Almost five nights out of a week (a good week) I can get six to seven solid hours of sleep. I hear eye-rolling. Roll away, my friends. Because if you’ve always taken sleep for granted, you will never understand how amazing it feels to wake up and feel ready-ish to get out of bed. And this is all thanks to my very lovely, holistic bedtime routine. After my cup of peppermint tea, I have a sachet of nutritionist grade magnesium and jump into a hot shower. Next, I lay on my Shakti mat for twenty minutes. I wish I could say I use this time to read or meditate or catch up with friends, but shamefully, I watch cakes being iced on Instagram. It helps my brain stop spinning. Then I pop on an eye mask, hit play on a meaningless Podcast and drift off into this wonderful new thing called sleep. Sidestep for an unsponsored plug. My Shakti mat, with its dozens of plastic torture pins, has changed my life. I bought one the moment it was recommended to me. Not kidding. I still don’t completely understand how it works, (acupuncture something, pressure points whatevers) but boy, I have never looked back.
Speaking of boys, this is where my sleep now unravels. Because how do you tell someone you’re sleeping with that you have a sleep routine? Sipping on magnesium isn’t your classic foreplay… So, sexy time replaces Shakti time. And while spooning is oh so lovely, I lie there knowing I’m sacrificing tomorrow’s sanity. As you might have worked out, this sleep thing is rather new to me, so a skipped night or two doesn’t phase me. But recently I’ve started seeing this guy semi-regularly. Which means I’ve been catching up with my old friend, four am. So I ask again, at what point do you share the fact you have a sleep routine with the guy you’re sleeping with? Or more importantly, the guy you’d like to keep sleeping with... At the moment he just thinks I never sleep. He’s even offered to not stay over because he feels bad that I don’t sleep. Spoon over Shakti for this vampire. But eventually, I’d like to actually sleep with him. So what woo-woo comes first? Secretly spiking my tea with magnesium? Waiting for him to snore deeply before I get on the mat? Sneaking in my headphones so I can drift off to meaningless chatter? I wish I could say “screw it” to all of that and sleep routine proudly. I mean he’s seen me naked, how much more vulnerable can you get? But somehow, my woo-woo, hippie side seems more polarising. It means opening up a part of me that I’m still discovering. A part of me I’m not yet confident in sharing.
So, I remain patient as I develop a new sleep routine. One where I try to find snoring cute. One where I replace the sharp pricks of the Shakti mat with the strong arms that wrap around me. One where I get a good night kiss instead of a good night's sleep.
And hopefully one night soon, they become one and the same...
