I did everything to sleep.

I pushed my late-night dinners earlier. I stopped having insane solo dance parties in my bathroom at 1 a.m. I took long baths. I showered in the morning. I showered at night. I replaced my pajamas with what I’d hoped would be . . . better pajamas? I increased meditation and journaling. I placed amethysts on my bedside table. I used every kind of “relaxing” spray and scent. I even saged the entire house, spending a great deal of time in my bedroom, ringing a bell and getting the smoke into every corner, in case it was caused by some lousy energy leftover from, well, my general day-to-day existence.

Everything short of medication and everything short of what I knew, deep down, was the truth: It was the fucking sun.

There’s a reason we depict our gravitational star with cute sunglasses and a happy attitude – it’s to deceive us into believing she has our best interest at heart, when meanwhile she’s here to make you . . . productive. She . . . believes in you? Why? The expectations are too great, it’s just too damn much.

I have always been a night owl, but I also sleep like a champion, with vivid dreams. I’m a dreamer anyway, and it’s really easy for me to just peace out mentally and go off to fantasy land. If I don’t sleep, I make up for the surplus of imagination by floating through the day in one constant day dream, and the problem with that, of course, is that I have stuff I need to do and be present for. It’s hard to be mindful (I’m a big, big mindfulness practitioner, and my tendency to be a space cadet is a large reason why) when you so easily slip into wild thought scenarios that are vivid enough to totally forget what on earth you even need to do, let alone do it. Also, the resulting dissonance of mind/reality wreaks havoc on my anxiety and depression, as what I spend most of the day thinking about isn’t anything that actually helps or progresses me in literally any way (though I often have a grand ol’ time!).

Don’t get me wrong: I like the warm sun on me – for a little while. I definitely overall feel less sluggish in “sunnier” weather – but good Lord, I love a good stormy day smack in the middle of long days journey into bright. Also, I sort of suspect that less than the sunny nature of spring and summer, it’s the warmer weather that gives me more pep in my step. To be fair, I suppose it isn’t the sun itself, it’s her terrible, terrible timing. How dare she get up so early. I need to sleep.

I realized that this all started when I moved into my house a few years ago; the bedroom has huge windows that face east, and I get a full dose of glaring rays the second they decide to show themselves. I had no problem falling asleep, it was that I’d wake up way too early, and then find it impossible to fall back asleep again. Even when I did manage to stay in bed for a few more hours, it was this terrible half-sleep that almost made me feel worse when I got up, as I’d lost hours of time and still felt crappy.

When I woke up recently, realized it was 7:30 a.m. and I’d only gone to bed at 2:30 a.m., I started totally freaking out. Full-blown anxiety attack, because now the day was a waste, I was getting nothing done, I was only going to have the energy to lay around and do nothing. I can’t nap because then I definitely wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep that night, and I wouldn’t have enough energy to do anything that would actually wear me out enough to keep me asleep, and so the cycle would continue and there I went down the black, black hole of panic.

That day, though, was different in that I knew what the culprit was. I knew the demon with which I would have to wrestle. I stared at those windows so hard. “I am going to defeat you,” I thought. “Through blocking out your sun friend, with whom you are one, I will ultimately destroy you.” For so long I had tried, oh yes, to lower myself in its presence, to be one with it.

Yes, that’s my sleep mask collection. But they fall off, are too small, are too big, etc. The purple sparkly one was meant for kids, oops, and my head is already enormous and adults aren’t allowed to have things that are fun, so there that one went. The giant black one on the upper right has headphones in it that sync to your phone so you can listen to stuff to block out noise and light; that one is actually pretty awesome, but also super duper hot as it wraps all the way around my skull like a medieval torture device. The one that works best for light is the fat thick gray one that looks like the remnants of a discarded Muppet, but it’s incredibly hot, as you can imagine. As is my room . . . because of the sun. It’s all her fault.

Listen. It troubles me to come to this conclusion. The sun is a universal symbol of good luck, of happiness, etc. If you get the Sun card in the Tarot it means that wonderful things are coming your way. But all she was bringing me was grief. It’s been like this since I was a wee child, sweating my ass off during the absolutely dreaded Field Day, the sun making me squint all day and giving me a migraine, no baseball cap because my head is a weird shape so it wouldn’t sit right and also they just make you hotter, and we can’t forget the never-great-at-sports-anyway cherry on top. The only good part was getting your face painted by someone’s mom (“Pick one of these four geometric shapes or cat nose and whiskers”), but the sun melted it off by the end of the day anyway.

(Now, the Moon and I get along better; then again, that Tarot card is about deluding yourself and illusions, so . . . well, yes, that checks.)  

Window treatments are outrageously expensive, but the Roman shades that I currently have are basically made from an old white tshirt that you won at a carnival in the 70s; I wouldn’t be surprised if, upon closer inspection, faint stains of funnel cake grease and the tears of children too short to ride a roller coaster were discoverable between the folds.

They mock me, these shades. Because during the day, they are perfect. Lovely light diffused all over, making my bedroom the perfect spot for reading (looking at my phone), journaling (about something terrible I read on my phone), and meditating (using an app on my phone that has meditation chimes instead of my actual chimes because because some reason).

I must admit defeat in the battle before I win the war, and therefore, I shall go to Lowes and fork over a gross amount of money for a new set up. I am hopelessly picky; I expect there will be tears of frustration (partly because I haven’t slept). I will force myself to be an actual responsible human and take measurements beforehand, rather than creating another instance in which I, a person not understanding of a Thing, describe my desires to a person understanding of The Thing with words like, “billowy,” “definitely long, but not like a haunted mansion,” and “easy to up-and-down.”

I will triumph. The dark will reign. I will sleep until 11 a.m. like God (of the underworld?) intended (for me, anyway).

Wish me luck on my quest.