I hate sleeping.

Well, I guess that’s not completely true. I love resting. I love sleeping in. I love lying down in bed and resting. What I really hate is finally getting myself to fall asleep.

It always seems to take me an unreasonably long time to fall asleep. Many nights I’m lying in bed, eyes closed but not sleeping a wink. It could be two hours of tossing and turning before I finally fall asleep. Because of this, I often put off going to bed, staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning until my body reaches a point where it feels exhausted enough to sleep easily.

So it’s hard for me to fall asleep — that doesn’t quite explain why I don’t like falling asleep though. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot recently. Reflecting on it now, maybe spending my time thinking about why I don’t like falling asleep isn’t the best use of my time. Nonetheless, I think I finally know why I don’t like sleeping.

I hate letting go.

Now I don’t mean that as in “letting go of the past,” such as relationships or actions. I mean letting go as in trying to control every single thing that happens. When I go to sleep, it’s entering the world of dreams. Anything can happen, any thought or scene could manifest itself in my mind and, since I’m no lucid dreamer, there isn’t really anything I can do to change what appears in my dreams — and I hate that.

Not wanting to fall asleep because I don’t have control over my dreams seems like a pretty ridiculous reason. I’ll easily admit that. But what really hit me once I realized this about myself is that the inability to let go is something that permeates my entire life.

For anything that happens in life, I tackle it as if I can control every aspect of it. I easily slip into a mindset that the success or failure of anything is solely in my hands. I have to be my very best at all times — if something goes well, it could’ve always been better because I didn’t do well enough; if something goes wrong, it clearly means I’m the one who must have screwed it up. No matter the outcome, it just means next time I have to try harder, to have more control over myself and a situation so that it’s always better.

This is a serious problem, needless to say. No can control every aspect of their life, and no one should try to. As a Christian especially, my inability to let go can be a major example of a lack of faith in God.

The thing is, I know — and I mean know — that it’s wrong to think like this. But I don’t try to think like this. It just sneaks up so easily, without any warning, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who can relate to this uncontrollable feeling.

All of this simply to say: it’s okay to let go. It’s okay for things to not go as planned. Of course, I should always try my best, but of course since I’m human my best won’t be perfection every time or even some of the time — it doesn’t have to be.

It’s okay to not have control. It’s okay to let go. Now I just have to learn that.