Going to bed at a decent time is most definitely not always easy. The daily grind of life itself is tiring as it is, never mind adding life with a mental illness on top of it.

While a mental illness definitely takes over your mind, there are also so many physical pieces to it that I find often get looked over, and ignored.

So, while I try going to bed at a decent time, often my anxiety has very different ideas.

I lay there, begging my mind to allow me some sleep. My anxiety tells me no, it simply won’t allow it.

My depression tells me I don’t deserve to feel well-rested and I definitely don’t deserve the peace of a good nights sleep, and my bi-polar tells me that if I wish hard enough to not wake up, maybe it might happen.

So there I lay, and my eyes close quickly, and I can feel my body slowly trying to drift off to sleep, and just when I am almost there, my anxiety comes knocking.

It feels as if there’s tiny little soldiers inside fighting against the sleep that I so desperately long for. My body aches, and now there are tears that slowly swim down my face and land in a stream.

A stream that runs deep through despair and exhaustion.

But, that’s how it is.

Everyday.

My body wants one thing, and my mind wants another. Sadly, they never agree. It’s like they play tug-of-war, but one side ALWAYS wins.

So, sleep is hard to come by.

I spend hours like this.

My mind swirls and swirls. It’s like I can physically feel it buzzing, even though on the outside you wouldn’t feel anything if you touched my head.

It gets louder and louder as each minute passes and suddenly the 8 hour night has become 20 hours long.

When I final silence the war, and the soldiers fall asleep, my morning alarm goes off.

And this is where the debate begins.

Do I get up EXHAUSTED and attempt to function as a mother in the best way possible, or do I try to get a few more minutes of sleep?

Sleep.

This is clearly the correct choice, right?

It sounds logical. It sounds like it would be the best choice.

See, this is such an often choice I have to make, I sometimes choose one, and sometimes the other.

What I’ve learned though, is staying in bed is ALWAYS the wrong choice for me. Even though I am so tired, and so badly want to sleep, I wake up groggy and am thrown right into the daily grind.

Get 3 kids out of bed, make breakfast, make lunches, sign agendas, sign notes, and everything else I likely forgot from the evening before.

There is no time to allow my mind and body to wake up, and welcome a new day.

It’s just all thrown at me, and I tend to get overwhelmed, which leads to being emotional, which leads to crying, and basically this continues on for the entire day.

BUT, if I get out of bed when my alarm clock goes off, I am completely exhausted.

It is a lose-lose situation really.

It’s so hard to get a good sleep, and it really affects my entire day in such an extreme way. It doesn’t feel fair to me that something my body NEEDS, is so hard to come by, but really, nothing about life with mental illness is fair, is it?

We just do the best we can each and every day. Take Care, Love Always N