THE NIGHT I SLEPT TWICE MY LIFE

I’ve never been a sleeper. Not in childhood, not in motherhood, not in menopause, not in neurodivergence. I always thought it was hypervigilance, or personality, or “just me”. I didn’t know it was ADHD and autism until fifty, and suddenly the whole pattern of my life made sense — the nights, the pacing, the half‑sleep, the wired‑tired body that never shuts down, my youth where it past sleepless, when i could manage on endorphins and love alone.

Then I travelled long‑haul and got sick. Proper sick. Sinus, ears, antibiotics, the whole thing. And because I wasn’t in my house — my safe place, my routines, my sensory control — I didn’t care for myself the way I do at home. There really is no place like home, especially when your body is a system you have to manually operate.

The first night back, I slept. I thought it was jet lag. I thought it was the four hours I somehow got on the plane — which I now realise was probably illness, not miracle. But then the next night, I took a melatonin, went to bed at ten, woke at four to pee, which is usually my six‑hour mark. Normally that’s it: I’m up, I’m done, my body has rung the bell.

But I went back to sleep. And then my partner’s alarm went off. I assumed it was seven. I trusted it was seven. I let myself lie there because I thought, “Look at me, sleeping like a normal person.”

It wasn’t seven. It was nine‑thirty.

I had slept double my usual sleep. And when I say I couldn’t function, I mean I couldn’t function. My brain felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Not even dramatically — just quietly snipped. A clarinet puppet, a classroom puppet, lying on the floor with a child trying to work the hands but only one finger moves at a time.

I was flustered by my phone. I was late to the first thing by an hour and a half and didn’t even realise. I forgot my antibiotics. My ears were full of ocean. My body was full of fog.

And it made me wonder: What happens when a body that has lived fifty years on half‑sleep suddenly gets a full dose? Is it healing? Is it shock? Is it too much? Is it the first time my nervous system has ever exhaled?

I don’t know. But I know this: sleep is not neutral for me. Sleep is an event. Sleep is a plot twist. Sleep is a system reboot that leaves me blinking at the world like I’ve been unplugged and plugged back in.

And maybe that’s the story — not that sleep is bad for me, but that my body doesn’t know what to do with rest. Not yet. Not after a lifetime of running on fumes.

Tags: sleep, neurodivergence, menopause, long‑haul travel, chronic exhaustion

FOOTNOTE FOR ALL THREE POSTS

This triptych was written from a voice note, in a car, while constantly stopping at red lights — a whole day lived in fragments, stitched together afterwards.

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