Another Sleepless Night

Last night was another sleepless night. I drank a cup of herbal tea and even forced myself through twenty pages of Mill on the Floss, genuinely one of the slowest paced books I’ve come across. And yet, I still managed to toss and turn for several hours before grabbing my Ipad and searching, for what I’m sure must have been the 50^th time since I’ve arrived at Oxford: How to relieve insomnia. I reviewed the list of 20, 25, 40 “helpful  tips to never have trouble sleeping.” And then flicked on the light to warm a cup of milk, mostly out of curiosity to see if the tip: “A cup of warm milk and Oreos calms the nervous system,” actually had any merit. It didn’t.

As I laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling, frustrated at how often this process repeats itself, this strange feeling of familiarity swept over me. Not past-few-days familiar, or even past-few-months familiar, but very familiar. I remembered lying awake just like this at the age of six, noticing the ways my toes created two mountain peaks in my turquoise blanket. And then, at the age of ten. And then all throughout the ages of eleven to seventeen. I resolved all my sleepless nights by dragging myself out of bed at 4:30am, making my way to my sister or parents’ rooms, and pushing them over to make room for myself by their side.

In the few weeks before my wedding, my mother said, “I’m glad you’re getting married. You won’t have trouble sleeping anymore.”

“Why?,” I asked. “What does that have anything to do with it?”

“You always sleep better with someone at your side.”

I shrugged it off, and never even noticed a connection.

But last night, I put it all together. I don’t remember a single sleepless night from the past two years of my married life. There was not a single night in the five days that Mehdi visited me last month that I had trouble falling asleep. 

It’s not fear. I used to think it was stress, but I’m relaxed at this point. Considering how draining writing a dissertation is, it’s not an excess of energy.

It’s almost as if part of me has just never gotten over leaving my mother’s womb.