a poem-prayer I need

For much of my adult life, I have been a bad sleeper. I can almost pinpoint the first instance of troubled sleep. I was in graduate school for the first time, close to leaving after my second (unsuccessful) year (There's more of a story there, for another time).

I was writing a review paper in a class. A class led by one of the professors that I considered one of the instigators of my leaving. As is often the case, I wanted to make her regret her decision. Realize she had made a bad choice. Come to me and say, "I'm so sorry, I didn't see how brilliant you actually are."

So I worked my *** off on that paper. I remember clearly staying up one night well past 11, an army of notecards ranged 'round me on the floor, as I organized and outlined and wrote. And I got a good draft of the paper done. And I went to bed.

And I did not sleep. I could not sleep. It was bizarre.

I tried not to worry about it. "You worked too late," I told myself. "You will sleep tomorrow."

But I didn't. I didn't sleep soundly, a whole night through, for over two weeks. Time slowed down. The world felt like molasses. Somehow I managed to go through my daily tasks of teaching and class-attendance (at this point, I was doing no research: what was the point? For that matter, what was the point of attending class now that I was Kicked Out Of Grad School, but I still went.)

That was the only time in my life I've gone to a counselor. I went to one of the Campus Psychological Services guys and explained my problem. He agreed that I was trying to make the particular professor "pay" and that I had worked myself up into a state where that was overly important to me. He reassured me that no one died from not-sleeping and that I was probably sleeping more at night than I realized. He also told me the problem would almost certainly correct itself soon.

He gave me the standard list of things: don't work in bed. Don't even read in bed. Take a long warmish shower before bed and keep the house as close to dark as possible in the evening. Visualize yourself swimming or floating down a river. Count backward slowly from 100...all the old tricks.

None of them really worked but eventually I started sleeping again.

Since then, my body or mind still periodically rebel against sleep.

I did not sleep well during my tenure process. Having bad nights of sleep started as early as the summer before.

I do not sleep well during the "PMS week" - I may be physically tired but I cannot slow my racing mind down. It is another manifestation, I guess, of being an anxious person.

I also do not sleep well when I'm keyed up - when I've been out at a meeting, late, and have had to either "herd cats" or deal with cranky and confrontational people. (Ideally, I need about an hour of quiet time to unwind in the evenings.)

I have always, I guess, kind of been an anxious person. Otherwise, my father wouldn't have admonished me throughout so much of my youth not to "borrow trouble." And I think part of my high level of organization and responsibility is just simple anxiety channeled into something that looks like useful work.

But anyway. I do not remember, as a child, or even as a teenager, having difficulty sleeping. But now, as an adult, I often do.

I spend too much time thinking about things - I spend too much time wondering why something didn't go better, or why someone made a particular comment to me, or how come I couldn't manage to get more done. Or I beat myself up for past failures, real or imagined.

Anyway. I saw a link to this poem on a blog, and traced down at least its secondary source. And I think this is one of those things I would do well to paint, in luminous letters, on my bedroom ceiling:

Let us be still in the presence of God.
It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done;
let it be.

(Click to read the whole thing. It is from the New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book. I am not from the Anglican/Episcopalian tradition but I must say they have some beautiful prayers. I have a small Book of Common Prayer [an older edition] on my bedside table. I had the odd experience once of flipping it open one day and having it spontaneously open to the prayer for Those Troubled In Spirit [that might be the wrong title] shortly after hearing someone that I cared about and looked up to was wrestling with severe depression. And yes, I said the prayer, tears streaming down my cheeks).

Letting it be is not something I am good at right now. Maybe I can become better with it at time. Usually now I 'trick' myself into sleep - I imagine something far distant from whatever I was worrying about. I imagine some kind of dwelling-place for myself, what the rooms look like, how they are furnished, where it is. I have imagined myself into homes ranging from a tipi on the plains to a lighthouse on the Michigan coast to a castle in Ireland. And stranger places even - as a tiny sprite taking up residence in an abandoned turtle's shell, or living in a cave made comfortable and hobbit-holish even though it overlooks a stormy seacost. I take my imagination - which can so often turn against me and force me to contemplate things that upset or worry - and make it serve me as a distraction.

But how much easier it would be, to be able to simply be still, to tell myself it was night now, and that tomorrow would take care of itself.