39 Hours

I was having a really hard time sleeping. I would be exhausted, but I’d lie in bed for hours, unable to force my mind or body to settle. My mind would circle endlessly, focusing on nothing and everything all at once. My eyes refused to close, just scanning the darkness. Eventually I’d fall asleep, but it was a restless one. Frustrated, I found myself writing in my journal one night that maybe I needed to just stay awake all night and reset. I, completely unintentionally, did just that a few nights later.

It started with an infuriating attempt at untangling some embroidery floss for a tiny crochet project I was doing. It came wrapped in such a way that it was impossible to use it without it getting knotted at some point, so in an attempt to avoid that in the middle of the project, I decided to roll it into a ball ahead of time. I had almost gotten it completely untangled when my tired mind made one wrong move and it was knotted again. I decided to go to bed. 12. I read a couple chapters in my book. 1. Then I lay there, eyes wide open, no indication of sleep. 2. So I proceeded to finish my book and move on to the next one. 4. I heard mom get ready to leave for work. 5. I had some splintered sleep amounting to about an hour, but that was it. 7. I heard dad get ready for work. 8. I had stayed up all night.

I surprised myself by not completely crashing that day. No nap, no going to bed early. I was actually kind of productive. I was tired, but productive. 39 hours. By the time I went to bed that night I had been awake for 39 hours. And you know what happened? I slept great that night, and every night since.

It sounds crazy. When you think of a reset, you think of rest. Taking time to let your body take a break from the business of life and rest. But that’s not what my body was asking for. My body was asking for a night with no sleep. A day of running on empty and making it work. Then, instead of fighting against my body to go to bed that night, I could actually have a restful sleep and wake refreshed the next day.

Sometimes the ways our bodies need to reset don’t make much sense. One person’s way of resetting might look different than someone else’s. Some people may need multiple days to recover from things while others may need no time at all. Sometimes your body needs rest, sometimes it actually needs more activity. Sometimes it takes 39 hours of sleep and rest, and sometimes it takes 39 hours of being awake to find some normalcy again.