On Sleeping Again, On Healing, On Becoming Real

On Sleeping Again, On Healing, On Becoming Real

Raven Heart - Locked away and Broken

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Once upon a time, I stopped sleeping.

At first, I thought it was the world unraveling outside my door. The weight of a pandemic, the way the air felt heavy with uncertainty. Fear had sunk its claws into everything, and I told myself: This is normal. Of course, you can’t sleep. No one can sleep. So I found a way to make it easier. A small, nightly ritual - an edible before bed, a borrowed kind of peace.

But the world changed, and still, I did not sleep. The nights stretched long and restless. The walls whispered, the air felt tight, and even in silence, there was something… wrong.

Here is a truth I did not want to look at directly: Living with someone who wishes to own you will make you forget who you are.

It happens slowly. Like a river wearing down a stone. You do not wake up one day and say, Ah, yes, I have been swallowed whole. No, it is more subtle than that. It is waking up tired every day. It is second-guessing every decision. It is thinking you are too sensitive, too much, too little. It is feeling like a ghost inside your own skin.

I told myself I was fine. I told myself I just needed sleep.

I did not need sleep. I needed freedom.

And then, one day, I left.

And something strange happened. I stopped taking edibles. Not because I wanted to prove something to myself, but because I didn’t need them anymore. And then, slowly, I started sleeping. Really sleeping. The kind of sleep that doesn’t come with a weight on your chest.

The kind that doesn’t carry the echoes of someone else’s anger.

I had been blaming myself. I had been calling my body’s response anxiety when really, it was a warning bell. I had called my lack of rest a symptom when it was a survival mechanism.

Because now, without him, I sleep. And more than that - I wake up.

And waking up is the right phrase, isn’t it? Because I am awake now in a way I wasn’t before. I am making things with my hands. I am creating art I can hold, shaping it into something that lives outside the screen, outside the digital ether. I am stepping onto a stage again, rediscovering the part of me that once loved theater, that once loved being seen.

It is not just about sleep. It is about breathing again. It is about remembering that I am not small. That I do not need permission to exist.

And that the world is still out there, waiting for me.