I’ve decided that this is part two of the posts about my sleep rather than part eight in the series on my broken brain. I really should stop calling my brain that because it really isn’t broken (much), but I find it amusing. Well, I do now. This is the post from yesterday in which I complain a lot about my struggles with sleep.
In the beginning, I called my brain broken because I really felt it was broken. I was not on the same wavelength with anyone, and I felt like an alien. But not an acceptable alien. Because of my dysfunctional home life, I was pretty feral when I entered school. Meaning, I was not properly socialized. I had no idea how to act around my peers or teachers or anything like that. My mom liked to talk about how brave I was wehn I was two (I chased off the bullies bothering my five year-old brother), but by the time I entered elementary school, that was firmly ground out of me.
I also had difficulty with sleep from a very young age. As I mentioned in my last post, I have not gone to bed before midnight my whole life*.
Side note: I think it’s important when you’re thinking of sleep that we rocognize that people have different circadian rhythms. There is nothing wrong with going to bed later and getting up later except it puts you off the rhythm of the world in general. I think the fact that I have never gone to bed early, not even when I was a child, says that it’s innate within me and not something I’ve learned one way or another.
I firmly believe that the mental health issues that arise from going to bed late are because of the hardships faced with trying to constantly fit into the early-birds world. It wouldn’t be so frustrating if the early birds weren’t so morally smug about it. Or if they didn’t look so down on people who went to bed later and got up later. Nobody scoffs at them for going to bed before midnight or points out how unproductive they are because they’re in bed by ten.
Though, come to think of it, if you’re a grown adult, most people expect you to stay up to at least ten. There’s always a narrow strip of territory that is considered normal, and woe be the person who strays from that narrow path. I do think early birds get more of a pass than do night owls, but, again, that’s if they don’t stray too far the other way.
One thing I find really frustrating is how morning birds want to attach ‘lazy’ to those of us who sleep in the morning. They like to crow (and yes, I’m going to stuff in as many bird references as I can) about how productive they were and all that they got done by noon.