It takes me about 1 minute to fall asleep when I go to bed. And I normally sleep fine for about 8 hours.
When I’m stressed about things, I stay up and distract myself with TV, books, surfing the internet, etc. Not because, I’m not sleepy, but because I’m not ready for the next day to get here. If I go to sleep, I’ll sleep and I’ll wake up the next day, time passes quickly this way. But if I stay up and distract myself, it takes longer for tomorrow to get here.
Fortunately, the forgoing only happens once or twice every couple of months.
I’m turning 65 soon. I am not married, and have no children. As such I worry about what will happen to me if and when my health declines, or I need assisted living. I don’t want to end up incapacitated in a nursing home, with nobody to monitor how I am doing. Am I being treated well? Am I clean? Do I have bedsores?
It truly worries me, at night, and alone. I could die and it would be a couple of days before anyone knew about it.
Things undone. I am not good at relaxing or turning off my brain at night. I can set aside long-term projects but that project I haven’t quite started yet ------ goodbye ZZZZZs.
Doctor’s appointment in the AM just to get my meds checked. I’ve got a couple of issues I’m pretty sure are minor but… Do I tell her about them or do I wait a month when I’ve got health insurance from my new employer?
The Higgs field could collapse at any time. It may have collapsed long in the past and we don’t know it yet. Boom, nothing bigger than a hydrogen atom left in the entire universe.
Not much, for quite a while. When I do have anxiety dreams such that I’m not sleeping well, I can usually trace it to something I should do but don’t want to do (usually out of fear or emotional discomfort). The only way to get rid of the dreams is to do whatever it is, and when I do I sleep normally again.
It’s bad if those keep you awake, but at least they fall into the category of “good worries” in my mind. Better than worrying about having enough gas to make it to work the next day or things like that.
I sometimes worry about my parents health. Their springtime was long ago.
Can I say this without sounding morbid? Hmm? Maybe.
Fear, fear of dying in my sleep. I was so sleepy last night and I sorta fell out in a fearful worried sleep. Those are the worst.
I’ve made peace with myself about dying and death since I was old enough to understand death. My Mother was dying when I was 10yo. She was dead right after my 11th birthday. So early on I understood the permanance of death. I never feared death until I was a Mom. I didn’t want my kids to understand death too soon. There’s time enough for that later in life.
My many trials with my health in recent times has put it foremost in my thoughts again. I’m still in a grief state over my Daddy’s death. For a time I was close to being suicidal over it. I’ve passed out of that, thank heavens. It’s awful thinking about ways to do yourself in. I never want those thoughts again. I have come to a self-awareness that maybe dying in my sleep wouldn’t be so bad. But in the wee hours after being awake too long my thinking is not so rational.
So, yes, fear keeps my eyes open, some nights.
Things that literally keep me up at night? Mostly the insomnia that seems to run in my family, but it’s often coupled with thoughts about things I’d like to get done in my spare time - decluttering the house, yardwork, finances, all sorts of odd things.
Things that figuratively keep me up at night? Like others upthread, ruminating on all the stupid things I’ve ever done and said, mostly having to with being thoughtlessly inconsiderate to people (including sometimes my own family) and not realizing what a dick I’d been until long after it happened.
Oh hell yes, I hope I die in my sleep. Dementia doesn’t run in my family, it gallops with wild and free abandon. Going out slowly, inch-by-inch over multiple years, ending up unable to anything for myself is a hell I pray I never know.
DorkVader - scraping the popcorn ceiling is a pretty quick job. You could handle it yourself, or pay a few hundred dollars (not sure how much since I don’t know how much ceiling you need to clear). The big caveat is that you should run an asbestos test before you test it. If it has asbestos, you should probably let it be, unless it’s failing.
What keeps me awake:
-Pain
-Worrying about the kids
-Worrying about my husband
-Kicking myself for failing to do All The Things
-Pain
-My life sucks
Yeah, thats a project maybe for next winter, a little less than 1100 sqft say roughly 975ish or so. I know the lab to take a sample to for testing, costs about…uh, well, used to cost between $35 and $50 depending on what you were testing for, don’t recall what asbestos testing was specifically, and that was a bit over ten years ago. So, I know I can figure out where to take a sample for testing and that it isn’t expensive. House, well kitchen cabinets anyway were built in 78 so…
In the middle of the night it’s occasionally pain of the dental variety, or I have to get up to pee. At least I fall asleep fairly easily after that.
My mornings just before I get up however are filled with how I’m not doing enough for my daughters, guilt over some asshole things I did 35 years ago, how I mistreated friends, how fucked up my finances are (and now we’re going into the holiday and tax season, so pile it on!), if I don’t lose my contract job in December I’ll lose it June, being 58 and having to look for a job, our living situation, and so on. These things conspire to shove me out of bed in the morning.
Funny thing is how so much of that anxiety fades by the time I’m preparing my breakfast and usually looking forward to the day. I mean it’s still there but it’s way in the background, not making me lay around with my head in my hands.
