Running from my thoughts

I know this sounds edgy, but I hate being alone with my own thoughts.

… is what I thought to myself while lying in bed sweaty, stressed, and with a stuffy nose as I tried forcing myself to sleep at 10 pm for a debate tournament in 5 hours. It’s a similar feeling to how I would stay awake the night before my birthday, Christmas, or a field trip, only with the childlike excitement replaced with adolescent dread. The negative feedback loop is impossible to escape: get stressed about the lack of sleep, fail to sleep, and stress more as a result.

This resulted in me tossing and turning for about an hour, giving me a lot of time to think about why sleeping has always been so hard for me. I would always be the last asleep at sleepovers, overnight trips, and family vacations, leading to an uncomfortable amount of sweaty and paranoid nights trying to trick my brain into slumber. I would research supposed “sleep hacks” and develop routines for myself, all to no avail until I finally came to a realization: I don’t like the period between lying down and falling asleep where I’m alone with nothing but my thoughts. In fact, I don’t like that feeling ever.

Ever since I got my first phone and pair of earbuds at age 12, I’ve been running away from that feeling. I would listen to music, podcasts, or watch videos to block out my thoughts. If I was walking around, taking a shower, or even leaving my room to go to the bathroom, I needed to be distracted from my brain and whatever it wanted to tell me.

During quarantine, my parents started to pick up on this habit. After all, it must have been tiring to yell my name 5 different times because I was listening to music on max volume. It must have been strange seeing your son walk downstairs with both earbuds in like an air traffic controller, only to refill a water bottle for 30 seconds and go back upstairs. They periodically suggested that I stop, but to no surprise, my 14-year-old self didn’t listen.

Eventually, my electronics usage became too much for my parents. They were sick of me after a year of quarantine, and after being prompted by an unsatisfactory Latin mark on one report card, my mom decided to confiscate my phone and set a curfew for my electronics usage. Of course, I wasn’t going down easy so I started looking for loopholes. I’m not kidding when I say that I would literally unplug my computer from its charger and leave the earbuds in so I could continue watching Youtube or listening to music while I used the bathroom. At 10:30 every day, I would begrudgingly stack my laptop, iPod, and earbuds, and shove them under the crack of my parents’ door. I tried taking a shower as usual and trying to sleep, but after a few sleepless nights, I decided that wasn’t going to work either.

Instead of giving up my electronics, I would only slide my laptop under the door and keep my iPod to myself (since my phone was locked away). That worked for about a month until my parents found out and confiscated it as well. When that happened, I stole my dad’s old Chinese phone and used that to watch Youtube at night. I would hide it inside my pillowcase before I slept and charge it in a secret drawer under my desk to not arouse any suspicion. Once my hiding spot was discovered and my backup phone was also confiscated, I brought out my old Kindle and searched the web with that. This also wasn’t great for my sleep schedule - I would push my bedtime further and further back so that when I finally did go to sleep, I’d be absolutely exhausted and pass out instantly, keeping the thoughts at bay.

My fear of my own thoughts truly knew no end – my parents would always confiscate my electronics and I would always find a new alternative. After enough of this game of cat and mouse, my options would finally run dry and I would be forced to confront sleeping on my own. Oh, those first few nights were horrible as I tossed and turned, struggling to fill a void that was once occupied by endless Youtube scrolling into the night. I picked up a few random books to try and read, tired myself out as much as possible, but couldn’t avoid the sweaty late nights spent staring at the ceiling and trying to force my brain off.

I would love to say that this confrontation finally solved my problem. It didn’t. After schools reopened and my parents were forced to give my electronics back, my issue with avoiding thoughts came back and never really left. Even as I’m writing this, I have a stream open on the side with the latest Valorant game playing to distract myself. It has gotten better though – I’ve started reading again, going on walks without music, and allocating times of day where I force myself to just think about stuff. This might be embarrassingly normal for most people, but to 14-year-old Julian, this was like being forced to explore the Amazon Jungle at night without a flashlight (or iPhone flashlight app).

That’s also the reason why I’m trying to write more: having more time to think means thinking more thoughts, and a larger amount of thoughts increases the chances that one of them might be, well, good. Hopefully, I can remember more of these thoughts instead of pushing them away, and hopefully a fraction of them I’ll be able to share. For now, I’ve got to go back to watching my Valorant game. See you the next time my entertainment apps stop working.

-Julian