Missing Message

“He has forgotten something. He knows that for sure when he wakes up. Something he dreamt during the night. Something he ought to remember. But sleep is like a black hole. A well that reveals nothing of its contents.”

-from Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

Bedtime was not a particularly difficult or memorable part of my childhood. I don’t remember ever having tantrums or being otherwise upset about having to go to bed.
However, my relationship with sleep – or, perhaps not with sleep so much as with the act of going to bed – became more complicated during high school and college.

These were the years when I truly hated going to bed. I would be willing to bet that many of my friends from those years can remember me saying so constantly. I’m pretty sure a common AIM away message I put up at the time simply said, “I hate going to bed.” It wasn’t because anyone told me to go to bed earlier than I wanted; it wasn’t because I had nightmares. It wasn’t for any reason that made any sense to anyone. Even I couldn’t grasp my feelings well enough at the time to articulate them.

Eventually I came to understand this hatred of going to bed as one of the many manifestations of my anxiety. I was afraid of a lot of things back then: meeting new people, having to call people I didn’t know, getting assignments I didn’t understand, being asked to do something I wasn’t able to do… basically anything that involved interacting with people in ways that were at all unpredictable or unfamiliar. In my mind, each new day presented new possibilities for all these frightening things to happen. By evening, most of that risk had passed. I had accomplished everything I needed to and was able to just spend time with my friends or by myself, doing something mindless.

But going to bed meant the end of one day and the beginning of another. It meant that the peace was over and the worry began again. So, I hated it. It was as simple as that.

Once I understood that, my feelings at bedtime became sort of an indicator of my anxiety level. To this day, I can still use this meter. If I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other as I get ready for bed, I’m doing pretty well. If I start dreading going to bed an hour before I actually have to do so, I know I need to something to get my stress under control.

And if I actually look forward to going to bed? Then I am in a seriously bad place. (Unless of course, my reasons for looking forward to it are something to do with illness or exhaustion.) It means that I am finding the whole of life so difficult and stressful that I look forward to sleeping simply because it is something I can handle. When sleep is my escape, I know I need to reach out for some help. The only time in my life that I consistently couldn’t wait to go to bed was during my time in Sweden, but it has happened a few other times as well.

Any of you that read my last two posts know that the last few weeks have not been easy for me. The loss Stephen has hit me, and many of my closest friends, hard. As I’ve been working through my own feelings and doing my best to help my friends through theirs, I’ve found that grief is an exhausting and stressful emotion. I’ve had a hard time focusing on anything, which has caused me to worry that I will forget to do something at work or to meet someone somewhere. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find myself back in that place where sleep is a relief.

But that’s not really how it has been. My emotions at bedtime have been very conflicted. Especially for the first few days, I did not want to go to bed because I felt like I had not yet done enough that day to help Stephen. Another day had passed, and he was still dead. Why hadn’t I done anything about that? (Yes, I know that nothing I can do will bring him back. I know that nothing anyone can do will bring him back. But the rational and irrational parts of my brain are always at war, and irrational has won a few battles lately.) Stephen’s death was just not something I could live with, and I felt guilty spending my time sleeping instead of trying to figure out how to save him. I still feel that way to some extent. So in that sense, I hate going to bed right now.

But as I lay there each night thinking about him, inevitably one thought will enter my head that allows me to pass into some fitful slumber: maybe I will dream about him. That, after all, is the only way I’ll see him again. It’s the closest thing to bringing him back that I will ever achieve. So each night I think as hard as I can about him as I fall asleep, hoping that he will make an appearance in my dreams.

Thus far, Stephen has not shown up in any dreams that I remember. I’ve actually only had two dreams that I can recall since his death. One of them had absolutely nothing to do with him or even anyone he knew. The other was about his funeral. That, obviously, is not what I’ve been hoping for, and I’ve had to face the fact that my dreams are just another thing outside of my control. Sleep has not been a relief at all. It's just been another source of frustration.

Yet I haven’t given up. I sit here now, approximately two hours before my bedtime, still wondering if tonight will be the night he’ll show up in my dreams. I feel like a dream might reveal something to me. I find that when I sit in silence looking at Stephen’s picture, occasionally I will feel something tugging at the corners of my memory, like there is something about him that I am forgetting. Something that will make me smile. Something that he said once that will make this all make sense to me. Obviously, I can’t imagine that I’ll suddenly remember that he once told me he knew he would die at age 27 and he was ok with it. But what else could really make this situation make sense?

For all my struggles with whether or not I believe if Stephen still exists out there somewhere, I suddenly find myself considering the possibility that this mystery thing tugging at the corners of my memory is not something I have forgotten about Stephen, but instead something new he’s trying to tell me. Maybe he’s got a message for me. Maybe whatever it is will help me to let him go.

It sounds so stupid to me, now that I’ve written it down. But it makes some sort of sense in the recesses of my brain. Maybe, tonight, instead of trying so hard to remember him as I fall asleep, I’ll try to listen. Maybe that’s when Stephen will show up and tell me what I’m struggling to know.

It’s worth a shot.

I suppose the only thing to fear is that Stephen’s profound message will be “Girls can’t do English,” “Heh, heh, alllll right,” or “I’m literally angry with rage!” I think that would just exasperate me, and yet make me miss him more.

But, Stephen? In case you can read this, let me say this: I’d gladly settle for an emphatic “I hate you so much.” Because I always knew what you really meant. Hope to see you soon.