It’s the presence of grief.
There was a time when I loved going to bed.
Night felt like closure then – a soft edge to the day. A place where the mind loosened its grip and the body knew what to do. Sleep came without negotiation.
Grief changed that.
Now, going to bed feels like charging into a battle I didn’t enlist for but can’t avoid. The lights go out, and the questions line up.
Will I sleep through the night?
What will my dreams plant – hope, or something sharper?
What will my nightmares drag in under the cover of darkness?
And how will whatever happens overnight tarnish the day before it even begins?
I still fall asleep eventually. Sometimes with melatonin. Sometimes with sheer exhaustion.
But grief doesn’t respect sleep.
I wake up again. And again. And again.
This is where the stories start.
In the dark, the mind becomes a courtroom with no judge. Every memory is admissible. Every fear takes the stand. The future is prosecuted aggressively, while the past is cross-examined without mercy.
Sometimes I fall back asleep.
Sometimes I lie still, careful not to disturb the quiet, and cry without sound. Grief teaches you how to ache discreetly—how to hurt without asking anyone to hold it with you.
Sometimes I reach for my phone.
Doomscrolling isn’t a distraction at this hour; it’s companionship. Proof that the world is still awake. Proof that I’m not the only one staring into the dark, trying to make sense of it.
And then there’s the certainty.
No matter what time I go to sleep. 10 pm. Midnight. 2 am. By 5 am, I’m awake. Every day.
There was a time I loved those early hours, too.
The house was silent. Untouched. Full of possibility. Early mornings felt like a gift—an unclaimed stretch of time before the world asked anything of me.
Now, that same silence feels… different.
Scary.
Unknown.
Foreign.
At 5 am, the day hasn’t happened yet, and that’s the problem.
What will unfold today beyond the safety of my calendar?
Will there be moments I love? Moments I fear? Moments I regret the second they arrive?
Will I meet the day the way I want to—or will my mind step in first, protective and loud, deciding what’s unsafe before I’ve even had a chance to feel it?
These aren’t questions I choose to ask.
They arrive fully formed, waiting.
This isn’t insomnia in the traditional sense.
It’s not racing thoughts before sleep.
It’s grief refusing to stay buried once the world goes quiet enough to hear it.
Daytime grief wears a mask. It answers emails. It shows up. It even smiles when expected.
Nighttime grief is honest.
It doesn’t want fixing.
It doesn’t want reassurance.
It just wants attention.
Maybe sleep isn’t broken because something is wrong with me.
Maybe it’s interrupted because something happened to me.
Insomnia, in grief, isn’t a failure of rest.
It’s the body keeping watch.
And for now, at 5 am,
I’m awake with it.
Closing Note
If you find yourself awake in the dark, asking questions you didn’t invite, know this:
You’re not weak for dreading sleep.
You’re not failing because mornings feel heavier than they used to.
You’re adjusting to a world that changed without asking you first.
And if all you can do right now is sit with the quiet and breathe, that still counts as being here.