I've never slept well, even as a young child. Insomnia and sleeplessness is a theme woven through my life, from as far back as I can remember, to my teen years, to becoming an adult - and at this point it seems unlikely that it's something that will change. Sleep therefore has become a signifier of the mystical and the precious, the most intimate of acts.

I’ve never slept well, even as a young child. Insomnia and sleeplessness is a theme woven through my life, from as far back as I can remember, to my teen years, to becoming an adult – and at this point it seems unlikely that it’s something that will change. Sleep therefore has become a signifier of the mystical and the precious, the most intimate of acts. So used to being awake long after everyone else, I now find it difficult to sleep if I am aware that other people are awake. It’s like a subconscious condition that needs to be met for my brain to switch off – of which there are now many. Bedtime can feel like a meticulous military operation, fulfilling all the conditions that my brain insists are necessary to even contemplate a good night’s sleep.

Sleeping with other people has consequently always been difficult for me. It adds in an element I can’t control, and as a light sleeper even the sound of someone breathing can keep me awake. I’m also keenly aware of the importance of sleep, so if I am lying awake next to a slumbering lover I become hyper-aware of my own restlessness, and often become paralysed and uncomfortable, scared to move in case I wake them up. I don’t know if anyone rests soundly the first time they lie down to sleep with a new person, but that inability to relax is something that has followed me years into a relationship. Recently I became too tired to try. And sleep became a much more vulnerable, intimate act. Something I guard closely that I kept for myself only. Before my current relationship, I dated someone for 6 months and we only slept together once. Play partners I have an otherwise close and loving relationship with will sleep in my spare room when they visit, because on a practical level (limited time together makes sleeping well and having energy more important) it makes more sense and emotionally it’s something I don’t want to share with them. Simply, it means too much.

The first time I fell in love I knew – perversely and at odds with the above – because I couldn’t sleep. We’d climbed into bed together for the first time, and after staying up late talking and kissing and being young and stupid in love, we’d quieted our breathing and closed our eyes. I didn’t expect to sleep and I didn’t, although for different reasons than usual. I was just too happy. Everything inside me still felt like it was fizzing and sparking with this fierce, stupefied joy. I spent that whole night lying awake and occasionally I would squeeze his arm wrapped around me to reassure myself that this was happening and every time he would squeeze me back. He, too, was lying awake unable to sleep because of how it felt to be lying in bed together like that. It was the first time in my life that being unable to sleep felt companionable, safe, and suffused with love.

That intimacy and association with love is something I think I internalised, held on to almost like a fairytale. But there is a darkness there, too. Because it is so precious and fleeting and intimate – some of my biggest sexual fantasies are about that being ruined, perverted, taken from me. The idea of someone molesting me in my sleep, of taking advantage of a state that I struggle so much to achieve. Being robbed of that to satisfy someone else’s whims and urges. Being so defenceless, vulnerable, literally unconscious that I might not even know. Or worse, become slowly aware as consciousness seeps back in, waking up to that dull horror, the subtle awareness that something is deeply wrong. As someone who finds it difficult to fall asleep, those kinds of fantasies are hard to achieve, which I think makes them feel all the more taboo. Quite early on in my relationship with Kristan he fucked me whilst I feigned sleep and, to me, it felt like one of the most intense things we had done together. It left a deep and painful impression, taking me to that confused and uncomfortable place where reality slips and you lose the fixed point of what is ‘okay’ or not. It’s a knife edge I so love to play with. 

Now, with sleep, I find myself in unfamiliar territory. With Kristan I sleep better than I do on my own, which is something I’ve never experienced before. I am used to bouts of bad sleeping being accompanied by a desire to be on my own, to obsessively set the conditions that allow me control over my sleeping environment. Now when my nights are bad I find myself wanting to sleep next to him. As someone who is used to relying on myself, there’s a difficulty in that, a deep vulnerability. Perhaps it is because of the things we do together, the inherent trust and intimacy that kind of  extreme play requires – maybe I’ve unconsciously let down some sort of wall. But it is fact: he helps me sleep. And even when I do not sleep well, if I am lying next to him I feel calmer and safer and infinitely less alone.