Some people treat sleep like a reward. A soft landing at the end of a long day. A place to rest, reset, be whole again. I treat sleep like an argument I keep losing.

It begins the same most nights: I lie down, the lights go out, and my brain turns on — like a bad roommate who only wants to talk at 2 a.m. Every unfinished task, every dumb thing I said six years ago, every version of the life I’m not living — they all show up, wide awake and chatty.

I try the tricks. No caffeine. No phone. Breathing exercises. Podcasts with voices so calm they start to sound sinister. But nothing works. My thoughts aren’t tired — they’re terrified.

Because sleep, to me, feels like surrender. A kind of trust I haven’t figured out how to give.

While the world rests, I worry. That I haven’t done enough. That I’m falling behind. That there are people out there, building empires on four hours a night, while I’m curled under a blanket just trying to shut off my brain.

And yet, when I do fall asleep — I fall hard. Ten, twelve hours, gone in a blink. My body, when it gets the chance, devours rest like it’s been starving.

But that only makes the guilt worse. I wake up groggy, confused, angry at myself. Half the day is gone. The sun feels like it’s mocking me. I scroll past morning routines and hustle quotes, and all I feel is shame.

Why can’t I just sleep like a normal person?

Why does rest feel like failure?

The truth is, sleep has become the battleground for everything I’m afraid to feel during the day. Insecurity. Pressure. The fear that doing less means being less.

But I know, somewhere deeper, that rest isn’t laziness. It’s not a flaw in the machine. It’s proof that I’m human. That my body remembers what I forget: we’re not built to be constant. We’re not meant to run without pause.

I’m still learning to trust that. Still learning that productivity is not the price of being worthy. Still learning that it’s okay to do nothing.

Because maybe sleep isn’t the enemy. Maybe it’s the mirror — reflecting back all the parts of me that are tired of pretending to be okay.

And maybe, just maybe, the real work begins not when I push through the exhaustion, but when I finally listen to it.