Sleep Was the Last Thing to Come Home

Of everything that came back, sleep came last.

Freedom came back on paper first. Then the phone. Then the work. Then the calendar.

Sleep took its time.

I learned to sleep light

The Marines teach you to sleep anywhere, in pieces, with one ear open.

The years after that taught me to sleep like somebody might need me to wake up fast.

Both of those were skills. Both of them kept me in one piece.

Neither one turns off just because the door you are behind is your own.

That is the part nobody warns you about. You get home, and your body has not been told yet.

What I stopped doing

For a long time I treated bad nights like a character flaw.

Lay there. Get mad. Count the hours left. Get up tired and tell myself to push through.

That is not discipline. That is a man arguing with his own nervous system and losing every round.

So I quit arguing.

What I do instead

Nothing fancy. Nothing I would sell you.

Same time down, most nights. Same time up.

Phone out of reach.

Outside early, even ten minutes, even on gray mornings. Some of my best sleep comes after a day near the water with a line out and nothing to prove.

And when it is a bad night, I let it be a bad night. One bad night is not a verdict on the whole rebuild.

The verse I keep by the bed

"I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety." Psalm 4:8.

David did not write that from a soft bed with nobody hunting him.

That is why I trust it.

Peace is not the absence of threat. It is knowing who keeps watch when you cannot.

I spent years being the one on watch. Learning to hand that over is its own kind of rebuilding.

What was meant against me, God is still turning toward good. Some nights that work happens while I am asleep.

If this is you

If your sleep has been wrecked for weeks, tell somebody. A doctor. A chaplain. One safe person.

That is not weakness. That is a Marine calling in a sitrep before the problem gets bigger.

On November 1 the clocks fall back and everybody gets an extra hour.

I already know what I am doing with mine.