Falling Asleep

There was a time when sleep just happened. No rituals, no gummies or guided meditations, just a bed, a blanket, and a body that trusted the dark.

Back then, my bedroom was an island, a sanctuary of glow-in-the-dark stars, faint shadows cast from stereo lights, and the gentle hum of nothing in particular.

I didn't check the time. I didn't scroll until my eyes burned. I didn't worry about the state of the world or the strange ache in my chest that now visits every time the headlines do.

I just got tired. And then I slept.

The world was so far away—outside my window, past the trees, beneath stars I couldn't see, but knew were there.

And inside, peace.

Not in a poetic sense, not as a goal, but as a default setting.

I dreamed of kaleidoscope colors, of time machines and endless arcades, of staying up past midnight and not being tired the next day.

I didn't know what anxiety was, or burnout, or doom-scrolling. My mind was still mine.

And the quiet? It wasn't scary. It was a lullaby.

There's a kind of sleep I can't get back to, not without effort, not without noise to block out other noise, and I sometimes wonder if that kind of peace was a one-time thing, only issued in childhood and quietly discontinued in adulthood.

But I remember it, and I carry it, like the scent of an old blanket in a cedar chest. Like a lullaby I haven't heard in years, but could hum a few bars if you asked.

This has been a love letter to a forgotten thing, and to the nights when the world didn't follow us to bed.