How do you save daylight, anyway?

I'm usually good at sleeping; I guess I'm lucky like that. It frustrates the hell out of me when I have trouble falling asleep or when I wake up every hour on the hour for 5 hours until I can't sleep anymore. But like I said, such occasions are rare.

So it's on these occasions that my thoughts turn to the people I work with - people who have been homeless for a good portion of their lives. They don't sleep. For many of them, they've never been able to because sleeping means nightmares about past trauma. Or they simply can't stop their brains from churning through thought after thought after thought. Or they learned the behavior while living on the street (how are you supposed to sleep when it's 15 degrees outside, you have to maintain constant vigilance to avoid being robbed of the few possessions you have, or you're in a shelter with 200 other people you neither know nor trust?)

It's these thoughts that have led me to theorize about mental illness. If sleeping is what reboots our brains, enabling us to better solve problems and process past events, then doesn't it make sense to say that a lack of sleep contributes to mental illness? I mean, everyone goes through shit. Some way worse than others (for some fucked up reason). But the ability to cope doesn't follow the extent of trauma perfectly. That is, some people who have seen hell are inexplicably well-adjusted, while others who have led relatively stable lives can't live with themselves.

Of course there's no simple explanation for what causes mental illness and there are definitely many contributing factors. But to this point I guess I've looked at the sleep thing the other way around, where those who are mentally ill don't sleep. But I think it's possible that those who don't sleep can be more susceptible to depression, anxiety, etc. Maybe even psychotic disorders? Who knows, really? It would at least partially explain the variance in people's abilities to adapt, so I think it's worth considering. (Most likely this theory has been thoroughly researched and studied already, but I don't give a shit, ok? Get off my back already. It's like when I invented the Knork in 5th grade and then I saw it on an infomercial 2 years ago. But even in the 5th grade I realized the inevitable problem of cutting yourself when the side of your fork is a knife.)

Anyway, why I'm even writing about this is I lost one of my insomniac friends last night. She was extremely well-liked throughout the homeless community because, despite everything she had gone through, she was still personable and caring. She was 41. And I can't help but wonder if she had ever been able to get some truly peaceful rest like I enjoy every night, whether she'd still be alive.

Here's to hoping that wherever she is, she's sleeping contentedly. Goodbye, Steph.