8 Things to Whisper to Yourself When You Can't Sleep - A Sunday Night Letter
There is a particular kind of awake that comes at 2am.
Your thoughts have gotten loud and you have already tried everything you know to do, and no matter how many times you turn over, you’re still here, in the dark, with your own head for company.
This isn’t an affirmation list. Affirmations don’t tend to work at 2am, the one’s that work in the daylight. ‘‘I am calm’’, ‘‘I am rested’’, feel like lies when you’re staring at the ceiling, and the lies make the loneliness worse.
These are different. They aren’t what you want to be true, they’re what is actually true. Eight things you can whisper to yourself, very quietly, in the dark, when you can’t sleep.
The whispering matters. There’s something about the physical act of mouthing the words that the body responds to in a way it doesn’t respond to thinking them. You don’t have to mean them yet. You just have to say them.
One: ‘‘It’s just a night.’’
Not a referendum, a verdict or a sign of something larger that you’ll need to deal with in the morning. Just a night. There have been many of them and there will be many more, and most of them won’t be remembered at all. This one is allowed to be ordinary, even if it isn’t easy.
Two: ‘‘I’m allowed to be awake.’’
There is no rule being broken or being awake at 3am. It is a thing that happens to bodies. It happens to many bodies, in many rooms on this same night. You’re not doing something you’ve been told not to do. You’re just present, in the quiet hour, with permission you didn’t realise you had.
Three: ‘‘There’s nothing to do right now.’’
The mind looks for a task and it assumes that being awake at this hour must require something. Action, problem solving, planning, fixing. There isn’t anything. The hour isn’t asking for anything from you. You can let your hands rest, you can let the list put itself down. Whatever is on it will still be there in the morning, and he morning will have you in better shape to meet it.
Four: Rest comes, even without sleep.’’
Lying still in the dark is doing something. The body is still releasing, still resetting, slowly, in small ways you can’t measure. You’re not getting nothing from this hour just because aren’t unconscious. A night spent quietly awake is not a wasted night. It’s a different kind of rest, and a different kind of rest is still rest.
Five: ‘‘I’m safe.’’
Right now, in this room, you are safe. The door is closed and the night is quiet. Whatever the mind is replaying, whatever conversation or worry or memory it has cued up, that’s not happening now. Now is just this. The sheet, the pillow, the soft sound of your own breath. Two words, said quietly into the dark, repeated as many times as you need them. I’m safe. I’m safe. I’m safe.
Six: ‘‘This can wait until morning’’
The thought that came back. The decision you keep circling. The email. The conversation you replayed. Whatever it is, this isn’t the hour for it. It will be waiting in the morning if it still matters. Most of the time, in the daylight, it will turn out to be smaller than it sounded at 2am. You can put it down without solving it.
Seven: ‘‘I’m not the only one awake.’’
There are other people awake right now. There are people in other rooms, other countries, other versions of the same kind of night. You’re not strange and you are not the only one. The 3am hour has it’s own quiet population, and you’re part of it for tonight. There’s a kind of company in that, even if no one else is in the room.
Eight: ‘‘It’s okay if tonight isn’t the night.’’
Not every night is the one when sleep finally comes easily. Some nights are this one, and that’s allowed. It doesn’t mean tomorrow is ruined. It doesn’t mean your body has stopped working. It just means tonight is what tonight is. The next one will be along soon enough.
You don’t have to learn this. You don’t have to whisper them in order. You don’t even have to whisper any of them. They’re here because they’re true, and because sometimes a true sentence said quietly into the dark does more than a whole hour of trying to think your way out.
If you find yourself making up your own, that’s the better version. The one’s that come from you will sound more like you than any list ever could.
You’re allowed to talk yourself softly through the night.
Rest easy.