The Year of Extraordinary Rest

When I started dating my partner, a gentle-giant Italian beefcake who likes to paint with watercolors and prepare increasingly elaborate pasta dishes, he was horrified by my relationship with sleep. This guy, I quickly came to understand, believes in luxury sleep. As a freelance graphic designer, he often works laborer jobs that require him to use all 6’3” and 250 lbs of himself. Add narcolepsy to the mix, and you’ve got a person who really, really needs his z’s.

Conversely, I am famously awful at what my mom and therapist like to call “sleep hygiene”. The National Library of Medicine defines sleep hygiene as a set of behavioral and environmental recommendations intended to promote healthy sleep. I’ve been hearing this spiel from my wellness-conscious mother since I was fourteen. But it was Felipe who introduced me to the specific idea that beds themselves were Serious Business, and moreover, that they should only ever be used for 1) sleep and 2) sex. He solemnly led me to his bedroom upon my first visit to his house and gestured to the gargantuan, lofted king-size that took up most of the available real estate. “This,” he said emphatically, “is a bed.” It sure was. I also practically needed a running leap, or at least a boost, to get into it. And I’m not a short woman.

The point, I understood, was being made because of the state of affairs at my apartment, wherein I was sleeping on a thin full-size perched atop a wrought iron frame that was very pretty but did nothing for my steadily-aging back. I’d bought it for myself and my cat, reasonably not envisioning any giant Italians in my near future. Felipe politely withstood this situation all the way up until we broke the very pretty frame whilst [details redacted for delicate eyes], and seized the opportunity. Within a week, his entire opulent setup had migrated to my bedroom, leading me to ponder the likelihood of needing to put a stepstool in the corner.

Nevertheless, I had to admit that the quality of sleep that I was able to get in the giant bed was incredible. It wasn’t the size of the thing (hush, please) that struck me, but the firm/plush combination feel of the mattress and the veritable wealth of memory foam pillows. I just literally hadn’t considered amazing sleep to be this important. Spoiler alert: it is. Sorry for not listening sooner, Mom. I found myself energized and ready for the day at earlier and earlier times in the morning, until I was converted to a wholly “normal” sleep schedule- midnight to 8am, give or take. I marveled at how much more alert, happy, and able I became within just a few months.

Which brings me to the center of my resolutions for 2022. I’m not one for toxic positivity, my chickens, so let’s have it out: 2021 sucked. Possibly more than its problematic hellscape of an older sibling, 2020. I am, however, an absolute fool for spectrums and dichotomies, and also for the birth of revolutions. It’s this sense of forward-motion, scrappy hope that makes me look into each new year with a certain buoyancy, despite myself.

And I have to admit – something beautiful did happen for me in 2021. Mortality hit me in a different way, for the first time in a decade or so. (I guess there’s nothing like a pandemic to make a girl realize that she lives in a perpetually fallible meat-suit, as does everyone around her.) I realized that I only get one body in this life, and I haven’t treated it particularly well in our time together so far. I decided that I wanted to feel stronger and more centered in my daily life, in my own body, than I ever have before. I didn’t know if this is something that I could realistically achieve by 2022, but that felt ok. I thought of this mission as sort of a befriending of my body, and friendship is a precious thing that takes time and care and patience.

I also noticed that I’m not alone in this feeling. Look no further than the Great Resignation for an unflinching picture of American professional life. It’s like everybody suddenly understood the specific limitations of their very own fallible meat-suit and went, “Wait a minute. Literally all I do is make wealthy people wealthier, doing work that I don’t enjoy. I don’t even see my goddamn family, let alone friends. There’s got to be something more to do with this thing before it kicks the bucket.” My recent conversations with every person I’ve spoken to under 40 years old, especially, have led me to the realization that this urgency to make a meaningful life – to risk everything for joy – has taken hold of an overwhelming proportion of the young working class.

The fact is that this body is my home. I’ve decorated it with tattoos, with hairstyle changes, with makeup and bright colors and all-black style phases. I’ve overworked it on grueling 60-hour weeks; I’ve starved it, both intentionally and not; I’ve carved into it and drugged it and made it stay awake for days on end and overfed it in largely useless attempts to soothe the harm. I’ve ignored it when it’s screamed out at me for mercy, for rest, for love. I no longer wish to be casually cruel to my body, and I hope that this effort will help me become less casually cruel to my spirit.

As I came into 2022, grappling with professional woes and personal angst, I learned something about the actionable side of this – about what it means to give my body what it needs; about what it would mean to celebrate my body both in motion and at rest, and in all the places in between. This is why I am determined to do the work and the little things alike that make all of me joyful: to keep going to therapy, to deepen my spiritual practices, to eat lots of dark chocolate AND lots of kale salad, to take luxurious baths, to go to the gym on a schedule, to go on long difficult hikes to beautiful places in nature, to get restful and high-quality sleep. I want to find a good boxing class. I want to find the perfect moisturizer. I want to learn how to listen closely to my instincts and listen wholly to those I love.

So that’s my resolution, friends. In 2022, I will give myself the gifts of rest and balance. “The Grind” doesn’t get my worship anymore; instead, I will lavish my one precious body with as much care, attention, and love that I can muster. And if I happen to catch myself critiquing my body or my spirit or my mind with any destructive meanness or impossible standards? I will forgive myself quickly, with affection and understanding, and reset. That’s the love I deserve, that’s the love you deserve, that’s the love we should strive to give to each other. And I think that together, we may have a shot at a rest revolution.