Elusive sleep

I have a complicated relationship with sleep - switching suddenly from 'good' periods during which I sleep for ten hours a night to 'bad' and unsettled bouts of early-morning waking. Each period usually lasts for about ten days. I don't know what determines the switch and am yet to identify knowable factors that affect my patterns of sleep. Exercise can either make me fatigued and therefore ready for sleep or it can over-energise me, making it difficult to 'switch off' come bedtime. Reading before switching the light off is similarly unpredictable. The only reliable thing I have found to aid my sleep is a hot water bottle placed on the small of my back (I sleep on my front) as I like to lie and pretend the sun is warming me. Otherwise, whether I sleep through the night seems to be a game of chance, and a frustratingly delicate game of chance at that: if I dare overthink the concept of sleep or how to achieve it, the likelihood of it eluding me seems to thrive.

I know I have slept well when I have dreamed. My dreams, when I am settled and at ease during the night, are paradoxically vivid and consuming, and resolve around heavy or unusual atmospheres that stay with me long into the following day. I often dream of death, that close friends have died, or that a potentially fatal accident is close-by. For me, such dreaming is not tiring: it is the mark that I have slept well since it shows I have stayed asleep for longer than three hours at a time. Much worse, much more tiring, is waking at 3am for many nights in a row. This is my clockwork tic: a pattern that can set in for days, or even weeks. My worst period of insomnia occurred last June, when I experienced 24 consecutive nights of broken sleep, sleeping for no more than 2 hours without waking. By the 24th night I felt depressed and bleary, desperate and unable to imagine I would ever enjoy regular bounties of sleep. On the 25th night, I slept for 14 hours and woke feeling overwhelmingly relieved. I don't know what changed between the 24th and the 25th night.

Broken sleep feels like a punishment for something, and it is difficult not to feel envious of those who sleep calmly and soundly every night. Sleep is restorative and balm-like, without it, life can feel difficult and unrelenting. If I wake during the night, it is likely that I will experience a degree of fatigued hyperactivity. Suddenly my brain wants to investigate every one of life's complexities and ponder the outcome of every variable course of action. I replay conversations I have had, conversations I haven't had, jokes I've made, better jokes I should have made, things I should have told friends, odd jobs that I have neglected to attend to, places I'd like to visit, people I'd like to meet with, books I'd like to re-read, the face of my old piano teacher, the feel of carrying a saddle, feelings of indignation, feelings of sadness, warm memories of nostalgia, a cutting remark I shouldn't have made. My head becomes a confusing bric-a-brac of moments, and it is during this time, in the early hours of the morning, that my mind chooses to sort through it - picking over it and sorting it and generally engaging in an exhausting process of re-examining and reconsideration. It is not soothing but punishing, and the night stretches ahead tiringly. It is during such nights that the world feels like a dark and lonely place.

These periods of insomnia are thankfully usually cushioned by periods of well-received rest. These periods are like holidays and I value them more highly than anything else I could experience. I regard healthy sleep as a comforting tonic - a rare balm that is to be respected and cherished - and when I am sleeping well, I look forward to bedtime hours ahead of its arrival. I sleep on my front, prone and straight, with my hands held close to my face. I enjoy the feeling of breathing against my hand and find the action itself incredibly soothing. At the age of 25 I am reluctant to admit to sucking my thumb - a habit I tell myself I have kicked but which in fact I continue to return to - whenever I feel tired and at ease. I also sleep well when I share my bed with any one of a very select few friends and consider my ability to slumber in their company evidence of the peace of mind and reassurance their silent companionship brings me. I thus always sleep heavily when sharing a room with my Mum. My favourite feeling is to wake in the night and to be tired enough to turn my head and fall back to sleep, even better is the vague and imprecise sensation of yawning before descending once more into dream.

I often think back to a holiday my family and I had when I was 11. We spent a few weeks in the Pyrenees - I think we were on the French side - and being in a high and remote hamlet, there was no running water and a very limited electricity supply to the house. The nights were so dark it was impossible to see anything but matt blackness - your eyes never adjusted to the absence of light, never saw outlines, never saw depth, only the black. Waking in the night to find the toilet was an impossibility. With this darkness came three or four weeks of the deepest sleep I have ever experienced - dreams so vivid I can still recall some of them, and a sleep pattern so stable and predictable I remember that holiday not for the experiences of the day, but the otherworldly ferocity of the sleep. It is a state I would like to feel again - inert, powerless to the darkness, utterly without motion. If that sleep was treacle, then the vague and wobbly sleep I have come to expect is more like gravy - thin, vapid, and lacking in an appropriately reassuring level of density.