The clock glows 3:07 a.m.

again.

The world is sleeping,

but my thoughts are wide awake —

marching in circles,

clattering like footsteps in an empty hallway.

I’ve tried everything:

warm milk, soft music, counting breaths,

but my mind doesn’t understand the meaning of still.

It hums, it whirs, it spins stories

out of the tiniest fragments of worry.

A text I forgot to answer,

a word I shouldn’t have said,

a dream that fell apart months ago —

they all come knocking now,

louder in the dark.

Sleep used to be a comfort —

a small surrender,

a fading into peace.

Now it’s a battlefield

where exhaustion meets anxiety,

and neither wins.

Some nights I lie there,

staring at the ceiling,

watching shadows crawl across the walls

like memories that refuse to fade.

My body begs for rest,

but my brain is a storm

that doesn’t run out of rain.

They tell me it’s “just insomnia,”

but it feels bigger than that —

like grief in slow motion,

like being haunted by your own thoughts.

The silence is so loud,

it echoes against my ribs.

Depression wraps itself around the night,

a heavy blanket that doesn’t warm,

and even when I close my eyes,

I see the weight of the day pressing down.

The mind whispers,

You’re not doing enough. You’re falling behind. You’re failing.

And so the body listens,

tensing even in dreams.

Some nights I drift for an hour or two —

a fragile truce.

But even sleep isn’t safe:

I wake up gasping,

heart racing from battles that never happened.

Nightmares and panic trade places,

each taking turns with what little rest I have left.

It’s strange —

how sleep, something so simple,

can feel like a distant country

you no longer have a passport to.

How something the body craves

becomes something the mind fears.

But I’ve learned this much:

to be gentle with myself in the hours before dawn.

To sit with the sleeplessness

instead of fighting it.

To let the moonlight touch the corners of my mind

and whisper that maybe rest

doesn’t always mean sleep.

Maybe it’s the soft breath I take

after a long day of holding everything in.

Maybe it’s the quiet moment

I forgive myself

for not being okay.

The world will wake soon.

The sun will come.

And I will rise —

tired, maybe,

but still trying.

Because surviving the night

is its own kind of victory.