Sleepthinkin'

When I was younger, I went to bed every night at 9:00 PM on the dot and woke up at 7:00 AM to get ready for my Elementary School life to begin that day. The only thing that would inhibit me from passing away into these wondrous restful young years of sleep was if I had been watching a horror flick before bedtime. Some days, like after I watched The Ring for example, I went upstairs and basically read Pokemon books in my room until 5 AM, because I would always be concerned that some creepy black haired girl was going to crawl out of my TV at any second and turn my face into a twisted nightmare.

However, as my Intermediate and High School years approached, I was acquainted with my other inhibitor of sleep that would follow me throughout college: Thinking.

Now, this may not seem like such a bad thing. I mean, thinking before sleep is good, right? You can go over everything that you have gotten done before bed and you can feel comfortable about where everything is at in your life, right?

Wrong.

You see, my thinking doesn't involve mental checklists and sheep casually jumping over a fence so that I may drift off into a lush wonderland, it involves a lot of worry and mind-racing.

I worry constantly. It's something I do. Any one of my good friends can tell you that. In fact, I might've had a blog entry about this earlier. Anyways, I'm not good at just "not worrying." I can't be "worry/stress free." That term doesn't exist to me. I believe that it's a comfort word that I use whenever I have things I need to be worrying about but I choose to just cloud them over with sensory pleasures and other things that inhabit my mind.

So, as I am laying in bed, naturally I start to worry. I worry about friends, relationships, homework, job opportunities, love, physical body image, classes, reports, etc. If you can think about it, it's been in my late night worry sessions, trust me. Once I start thinking about one, it's over. My mind will race and tear through countless other branches of thoughts that come out of this one idea, and it will end up wrecking my psyche to the point where I just break down.

These sessions have brought me to tears on multiple occasions. I just end up slamming myself with insults in the end about how I am ugly, nerdy, worthless, and how I don't deserve anybody in this world. The record for how long one of these cry/think sessions have gone on you ask??

3 and a half hours.

(Side Note: This may seem like a "pity party post" by me and I apologize if it is coming across that way, but I just wanted to share some of my life and what I am going through sometimes with the public. I mean, it is a blog, right? I'm allowed to talk about my feelings and ramble on about things that you might not even care about, right?)

Anyways, what I've learned about my "Sleepthinkin'" sessions is this: They get me nowhere. I will end up worrying for hours upon end just to end up at a blank slate of tears galore. I don't end up helping myself at all. But helping myself is what I need to be doing. I need to be telling myself that I am indeed worth it and I will find someone eventually, but I also need to make sure I stay strong. I can't be the weak person afraid of hurting even the smallest feeling so that I can be happy. I mean, I don't want to hurt feelings at all, but sometimes I know that I have to be at least get my own feelings across. I just need to be strong.

You know, I used to like Britney Spears's song "Stronger" only for the catchy chorus and amazing beat. In my younger years, I danced around the house and appropriately flexed during the songs pivotal chorus. It was fun. However, now I'm actually listening to the lyrics and understanding that maybe that song has more to do with my life than just a catchy tune.

So, as I go to sleep the next few nights, I just have to keep believing "my loneliness ain't killing me no more," and that way I'll be "stronger than yesterday," or last night, rather.

~This is Deej, signing off.