Prompt – You lay there in bed and toss and turn and can’t fall asleep. All you can think about is…
Everyone has those restless nights sometimes.
You lay down with the intention of getting to sleep at a reasonable hour. That could be 10 o’clock pm or midnight depending on who you are, but it doesn’t work.
You lay down and then immediately thoughts start coming to your head. This can be anything from how your day went to your mind scaring you with the thought that something is horribly wrong. It happens to the best of us.
For me, there are certain things that come to mind on a regular basis that fall into certain categories almost:
- Death
- Love
- Friends/Family
- Fears
The first, death, is the one that happens the most often. It’s the easiest for me to understand as we all, to some degree, fear death. Whether we fear ourselves, or others, dying depends on each person.
For me, it’s usually the fear of someone close to me dying. This has included both my parents, my pets, and my closest friends.
It has included scenarios from people dying in simple car crashes to them suffering through cancer. It has even been known to translate into my dreams because of this as I will discuss later in the post.
Next, the thoughts I have about love. I’m someone who, for some reason, will make scenarios about how things would be if I was able to keep the person I’m with or sometimes how I can’t deal without them.
This has included scenarios from a person deciding we can’t be together because of distance to full arguments that lead to us never talking to each other again. I can’t help that I do this because I genuinely fear what would happen if me and my new partner didn’t work out.
Also, sometimes I have thoughts about specific members of the family or closest friends and how they could be different.
This has happened with me having thoughts about whether everything would be different if my parents were together to how simple things like my one sibling finally forgiving my mother. It happens with all members of my family when I start wanting to, ironically, unwind and get enough rest to deal with another day.
With friends, it can be the thought about what would happen if I actually saw them again. My closest friends in high school haven’t contacted me since I left. Some of them that I’ve tried haven’t responded and that haunts me.
In a recent post I discussed the person I want to fix the relationship with as being my best friend since I was 5 years old. He’s the one that haunts me the most in that way because of all that we did together and how well we still get along after this time.
Now for the one that’s the hardest to talk about for me; I have to talk about my fears.
I have a few main fears that have kept me awake at night in the past:
- Betrayal
- Heights
- Failure
The fear of heights has been around for ever. A lot of people have it and sometimes I just think about how I’m still willing to deal with simple things like roller coasters sometimes just because the adrenaline is worth it. (I know this one is more innocent, but it’s true)
My fear of failure runs deep for me. Although my parents are always supportive of what I want to do, it hurts whenever I don’t do as well as I want to.
Recently, at the end of my first semester, I failed two classes. One of them is the major course for me. I can make excuses all I want, but this adds an extra year onto my undergrad after only one semester.
I can be getting to understand why that happened to me and then someone asks me about my grades and I freeze. I know it happens to the best of people and I had a lot of mental problems that contributed, but that doesn’t excuse it for me.
This is the hard part for me. I have a terrible fear of betrayal that has been around for a long time. I have seen family and friends betrayed and it has made me terrified.
Recently, I was betrayed by the person I thought I was going to be with for the rest of my life. This was back in September.
There are many posts on the blog discussing this. One of them was called Poem Rant.
Discussion
- What are your fears that keep you awake at night if any?
- How do you get yourself to calm down enough to sleep? I sometimes struggle with this one terribly.
My Life Story 