sometimes it’s just the eyes that are tired and it’s the worst
I forget what its called but basically it’s unconscious revenge on feeling like your life isn’t your own, so you ‘take back’ time by delaying sleep.
Sometimes just some mildly swollen nasal passages will make you feel an effort to breathe, so you can’t zone out, so things start getting emotional and you start breathing more agitatedly, the senses become more acute… you get caught in a loop that spirals into something that it wasn’t when it started.
At that point, I know it’s an uncomfortable but wise strategic move to get up, go to the bathroom, feed the cats, do something or even just stand up, erase the mental/emotional whiteboard and start again.
I’ll turn on something mellow but arid on tv - like a BBC documentary on the Byzantine Empire - and keep an eye on my breathing, slow it down. At some point I can feel the nasal swelling subside by itself, and I try again.
When you’re literally falling asleep on the couch, finally decide to switch to the bed and your body goes: Nah, I don’t want to anymore.
Somehow Last Podcast on the Left consistently puts me to sleep within a few minutes to the point where I just listen to it with a 45m sleep timer when I go to bed, which means I’ll need to rewind and listen to the same episode for over a week until I finally get through it.
