Let me set the scene for you, it's two in the morning on a weekday. You know you have school or work the next day and you need to be up by six am. You just toss and turn and stare at the ceiling mentally screaming at yourself to just fall asleep already.

But you can't.

Why? Because your brain is running at light speed and your toes are wiggling at the end of your bed. You turn to your other side — now you're staring at a wall. All you can think about is how you need to sleep, yet at the same time, you're also thinking about how you didn't eat enough yesterday, how you should go on runs more, and how you should really clean your room even though it's not that dirty — it's just that a few things are out of place and thus the room is just disgusting.

All these thoughts are racing through you're head at the same time. They're overlapping. Then suddenly it's like there is radio static right in your ear. The DJ is slightly coming through. Now you just have these thoughts, one after another. They're not happy thoughts. You should really stop spending so much money. They're overlapping, there's so much going on and this freaking brain radio won't turn off. Now you're on your back. It's too much, your toes are wiggling and your fingers are rubbing against each other and your brain is just thinking and thinking and keeps switching topics one after another, after another, after another.

It's too much. You can't sleep.

That is how my nights used to be, seven days a week. No breaks! I'm not sure what caused it — too many things, I'm sure. For a teenager, I sure have gone through some crap. But it got to the point where I was only getting two to three hours of sleep every night. It became normal for me to run on basically no sleep and just fill myself with coffee to keep myself going. I tried so many things to get myself to sleep. Lavender spray and gummies, warm milk, even eating right before going to bed in hopes of putting myself in a food coma (it didn't work, I just felt bloated in the morning). I even tried jam-packing my day with so many things that I majorly overworked myself and I still I just couldn't sleep. This got to the point where the only result of my lack of sleep wasn't just exhaustion — suddenly I was having daily anxiety attacks. My life was just one big, constant anxiety attack. It was controlling my life.

So, what did I do? Firstly, I talked to the appropriate people (my therapist, my mom, and my doctor) and got myself on anxiety medication. This was back in early September and so far it has helped me so much. I rarely have anxiety attacks now, so this is a huge step in the right direction for me. I still have days where I don't really want to talk and my mind races, but to put everything in perspective, that behavior went from every other day for me to now maybe once a month. That's huge.

Secondly, I figured out the timing. I used to do all this stuff to try and fall asleep right before I turned everything off and tried to go to bed. Now I start about an hour before I plan on going to bed. Around nine or ten I start listening to music, songs like "Show Me How" (Album V) by Men I Trust and "come out and play" by Billie Eilish really help me calm down. I started using a diffuser that I put lavender oils in a while before I even get under the covers.

I started stretching before bed. Personally, I use the Blogilates app. This is actually a workout app, but she does have a nighttime stretch video that has been working really well for me. It's only ten minutes — truly, take the time to release the tension in your body, it really does make all the difference.

Finally, I take melatonin and Rae sleeping pills. I try to keep whatever I put in my body to fall asleep natural (something I learned from my mom). Ever since I started using Rae I have been getting better sleep. Rae is available at Target though they are a little pricey. Sleeping pills are really the only thing I use that regularly costs money — you should really only use it if you truly, truly feel you need it. There are definitely free or low costing ways to help yourself, try the music and stretches before paying money.

I still don't sleep amazingly — I still wake up in the middle of the night and take a good thirty to forty minutes to actually fall asleep. But in the last few months I've gone from two to three hours a night to now, five to six. Some nights I even get eight hours, usually on weekends. Compared to how I was sleeping back in March, I have seen a huge improvement in not only my sleep but also my anxiety. Since I am sleeping more and on medication, I no longer live my life stuck being nervous about everything that happens during the day. After all that, and all the effort I put into just getting six hours of sleep I'm not doing great, but I'm getting there. And honestly, that's good enough for me.