The Hours

After three decades of struggling with ‘insomnia’, Kalyani Prasher discovered her sleep disorder was a little more complicated.

I haven’t slept well for over 30 years now. As a teenager, it was kind of dope to be the brat who slept late at night and struggled to wake up, but I hadn’t bargained for this to last my entire life. Once I began working, I was no longer able to catch up on my sleep in the afternoons— and starting a full day of work on two-hour sleep meant I came home and crashed, and was awake all night again. It was a brutal, endless loop.

Naturally, I diagnosed myself as an insomniac, and spent most of my youth staring at the ceiling at nights, until the smartphone revolution brought the internet into my hands. I was still staying up till about 4 or 5 am, but now at least I had something to do. But blue light is worse for sleep, you say? I knew that. I hadn’t been sleeping for years and years anyway, and it made zero difference to my ability to sleep for those two hours every night.

Then five years ago, I quit full-time work and yay!—for the first time in my life, after struggling through school, college and my 10-year job, I was now able to sleep in every day. Soon, increasing at about half an hour every week, my sleep time became a full eight hours. Trouble was, I still wasn’t sleeping at nights. Life as a freelancer has its advantages but you still have to work and, by 4 pm, when I was ready to start my workday, most of my colleagues were wrapping up theirs. I would wake up to several texts and emails and as a result I was waking up stressed and felt like I was always playing catch-up. This wasn’t working.