Sleep Diary

June 30, 2024

Bed at midnight. Awake at 3:12 A.M. Back to sleep around six, awake again at 8:39 A.M. Very hot out.

June 31

Bed at one thirty. Up at six thirty. Realized these are my final hours in my apartment before I move tomorrow. Not much sleep, but for good reason. When I already know that my sleep is going to be abbreviated, it’s easier to make peace with the specter of fatigue.

This apartment has a skylight, and my bed lies directly beneath. All the time, it gives the sensation of soaking in a sun shower. It is as if I am sometimes being cursed by God’s blessing. No air conditioning, so I freeze tomatoes in the icebox, as I call it to myself—I live alone—and then put them on my belly and heart to cool.

The past few weeks, when I’ve been up in the night and sensed morning coming, I’ve tried to locate the darkest corner of my studio apartment. This just means I’ve moved my top mattress layer, a cotton Japanese futon, to the floor. Restless, with one pillow and one sheet, I escaped the skylight. With my body this close to the floor, I can feel the rumblings of the building below me, the deep hum of the subway underneath, and the trucks outside, all the sound so bass-tone that I forget I’m even listening. Makes me think of the way that they say mushrooms speak to one another from underground, or of the sound of a whale.

July 1

Bed at midnight. Up at eight. Miraculous!

July 2

Bed at two. Up at four. Really wanted to make a snack, but I have no food here. Strange, to be hungry somewhere new. Back to sleep at five ten or so. Up at eight with a profound yearning for toast.

Four or five years ago, I often began to wake, full of beans as they say, sometime between two and four in the morning. It started in late winter, so I tiptoed around my house in wool socks. I was spooked by how energized I felt and by the quiet. Then the inevitable, anxious fantasy: Was I awake because something bad was supposed to happen to me? Gradually, I began to notice a rhythm. My body would activate, I would spend as many hours awake as needed, and then I would sleep hard till the day began. Waking up, I felt washed ashore.

July 3

I didn’t sleep well. In the garden of a bar on Washington, one of my dearest friends turned thirty. I love birthdays and the relief I feel when someone transcends this freakish decade. I didn’t drink much and came home early to walk the dog. There I go again: trying arduously to do things right.

I have the habit of, after a bout of indulgence and whimsy, gravitating toward self-imposed rules. There are some things that I know would make my life easier, and they sound tremendously boring and weirdly arduous: no blue light before bed. Have “wind-down time.” Take magnesium, bitch! Conventional wisdom advises against eating before bed, but I learned to release that expectation long ago. I am sorry for the confusion my digestive organs must experience, but a nighttime snack is one of life’s great joys.

The truth is that I am having a bout of summertime sadness. I am experiencing heartache that I imagine as a cyanotype: silhouetted, shadowed, beautifully blue, activated from staying out too long. On my first beach trip of the summer, last month, I burned the skin under my bikini top, at the bottom of the curve of my belly, and at the tops of my thighs. The burns have stayed, turning darker and looking like a comically unflattering contour. I bathe in vitamin E oil and imagine heat radiating from each spot holding the sun.

July 5

Tired myself out at work. Though I am a chef by trade, my job this summer is being a waitress. It is challenging but in a totally different way than I have ever known. I think it’s all the carrying of plates and performance. Restaurants give you something to wash off in the bath. Asleep, heartily, at one thirty. Up at nine. Proud of myself.

July 6

Should you purposely dehydrate yourself before bed so that you don’t have to get up in the night?

July 11

Bed very late. Awake at five, ravenous. I make my sunrise meal: important to eat something warm. Slice of bread, olive oil, in the pan. I don’t have a toaster. Handful of greens, squeeze of lemon. Let them get soft, then scramble one egg with feta cheese. No coffee yet—there’s a chance, after this meal, that you can get back to sleep. I do, and I awake feeling full.

July 13

Mercifully sleepy at ten thirty. Max the dog, who is my ward for a few days, sighs and splays at the foot of the bed. There is enough of a little breeze for a sweatshirt at bedtime. I imagine myself in Goodnight Moon.

Up to pee at two thirty. A thunderstorm begins, and I stand in my kitchen, sweatshirt hood on my head: a little monk, waiting for water to boil, staring out the window at the thumping rain. Back to sleep at three thirty. Challenging, searing dreams. I had a baby and it made me really happy, but no one celebrated her much. The birth had been a lot easier than I had anticipated it ever could be. Still, she and I both felt ignored—me more than ever, because she was so delightful. At seven, feeling different. I am half-nude and obvious; I took the sweatshirt off in my sleep.

July 17

Ate a pickle before bed at one. Woke at seven thinking inexplicably of the word Cascais.

July 19

Slept through the night. I was thinking this morning about how some people freak out when they can’t sleep. We fear that if we don’t sleep, we won’t be able to arrive as the person that we are supposed to be in daylight.

The irony is not lost on me: in attempting to decipher sleep, I am analyzing what is perhaps the most passive thing we can possibly do. Reminds me of that embarrassing law of nature that the more you try to control something—particularly yourself—the more defiant, unbridled, and intense the thing becomes. Kind of pitiful when the attempt to govern touches sleep, interrupting a mystery that takes care of itself—our brains going somewhere else, cells replenishing, eyelids flickering.

Happening all the time, terribly unknowable, and the closest, of course, that we get to death.

July 20

Big night out in Sunset Park. This morning, I chugged a coconut Electrolit. In a terrific mood, I bought flowers—daylilies, with blackberry branches mixed in. Profoundly beautiful and insanely expensive. I trotted my way home and luxuriated in the gift of a day off. Deep sleep throughout the afternoon as if I were jet-lagged or unwell.

July 21

What an indulgent feeling, for wakefulness to activate as the sun sets. Another garden, soft little lights, everyone blowing cigarette smoke out the corners of their mouths, away from one another’s eyes. Another birthday, another big night out. Two is quite enough, it turns out. Bed at three, up at ten. We stopped at the bodega on our way home, and I got a tremendous sandwich called the Iron Man. Halal chicken, sour peppers, white sauce, avocado. I ate half of it before rolling into bed.

July 23

Bed at 11:23 P.M. Up at 8:17 A.M. I never have trouble falling asleep, I realize. Just the staying.

July 24

Delightfully asleep at ten. I woke at midnight and ate a crumpet. I recently learned about something called revenge bedtime procrastination, where you engage in leisure activities in the night that you might not have been able to squeeze in during the day. Interesting. Watching tragicomic, brain-cleansing shows birthed from the Bravo universe. Organizing something useless in one’s apartment. The profound act of scrolling. Having a nightcap.

Being awake gives one ample time to consider habits and their relation to time. On a sundial, the gnomon is the upright part that casts the shadow. Gnomon, in ancient Greek, means “one who knows or examines.” At night, there is no sun with which to locate shadow; in a way, a person becomes the gnomon. What kind of incapacitated waiting is necessary to know something new? I’ve decided that it feels much more worthwhile to imagine that I have been awakened so that I can learn something I couldn’t quite squeeze into daytime. During the day, we can tell the time by the sundial’s shadow, and it dictates what we do and when we do it. At night, everything is shadow—ten could be four could be one could be three could be twelve. The only standing thing is us.

I’ve also wondered at the inverse: perhaps each hour means something specific. This is where the traditional Chinese organ clock comes in. Chinese medicine’s twenty-three-hour body clock is divided into twelve two-hour segments of the qi (life force) moving through the organ system. Each set of hours, then, corresponds to an organ—but also an emotion. The hours of 1 to 3 A.M. are when the liver most productively regenerates. The liver filters the blood but also regulates emotions like anger and resentment. The hours of 3 to 5 A.M. are the hours for the lungs. Not only do the lungs govern our respiration, but in traditional Chinese medicine, they also correspond to channels of grief and worry. I’ve developed a fondness for treating this clock as its own index of nighttime clues. Any flare in the dark as a potential explanation for awakeness resonates like a firework.

July 26

Upstate. A 10:25 P.M. bedtime. Melted into sleep, awakened at seven with color in my cheeks.

July 28

Back home. Bed at midnight. A random light turned on on its own at 5 A.M. I swear to God! I tried to change the bulb but remembered that I was tired. I slept fiercely until ten.

July 30

One can’t underestimate the presence of Love Island (both domestic and international) in my somatic life. I brought my watching to the postwork bath. Then to before bed, activating an unnerving and hyperactive part of my brain. Now the characters—once I have the strength to power them down—trot around, glistening and stressful, in my dreams. Especially the hot snake wrangler, Rob. But today I decided: no more Love Island before bed. If I really need to watch, I can wake up early. This idea is so pragmatic that it embarrasses me, which feels productive.

July 31

Bed at one. I drifted away, and then at two or so the light turned on by itself again. Maybe my apartment is haunted. Maybe I am being sent a sign. What type of omen is this? My brain chews the cud of various abstract interpretations for this spontaneous occurrence. Wondering up at the overhead, I am mystified. I fiddle around and realize that if I turn the light’s dial in the opposite direction, it releases a satisfying click. Perhaps the illumination was a mechanical error then. I suppose it was just the cross breeze.

Rosa Shipley lives in Brooklyn. She writes the Substack Palate Cleanse, on food, culture, and wellness.