It was during the 2021 pandemic that I first started having trouble sleeping. I was up for hours before getting out of bed at dawn to go for a walk. It had become a daily routine. After suffering for months, I called my family doctor. But he was hesitant to prescribe me sleeping pills. Instead, he asked me to change my lifestyle. No screen time, chamomile tea, meditation, and white noise for at least three hours before bed.
i tried it all. My insomnia didn’t go away, but I learned how to deal with it. What helped me the most was chamomile tea and white noise. rice field. I had a good night’s sleep, but the fatigue of many months of restless nights was still there.
Then one day in August, I was in bed looking for a white noise that I hadn’t tried before. sleepyIt was nothing like I had heard before. I fell asleep with a nocturne playing on my earphones.
The next day, when I woke up, the music had stopped. The earbuds were still on, but the battery was dead. I am no longer exhausted. For the first time in a long time, it wasn’t a groggy morning.
British composer Max Richter describes his eight-hour symphonies as “a place to rest”. sleepy gave me a place to rest. But home is where we can rest most comfortably, right? i thought to myself. And I was home. Then why couldn’t you comfort me?
It took me a while to solve the puzzle. I was home during the lockdown, but I was mostly unfamiliar with it. The world was almost unfamiliar. The world as I knew it has changed. Covid stats were publicly available along with the weather forecast.
Richter’s Lullaby made me feel closer to the world I left behind. It brought me relief and prepared me to embrace the brave new world that lay before me.
