So I take hours to fall asleep if I’m on a day shift schedule (I can go to bed at 9 or 10 and still be awake come 4 or 5 am) but when I work night shift and go to bed at 8 or 9 am I’m asleep within 15-30 minutes. I don’t usually dream that often, it seems to correspond more with my mental health. If I’m going through it I dream more. I think it’s both an escape mechanism and my brain’s way of processing things. Normally I don’t notice I start dreaming right away when I am in a full night’s sleep, but I’ve definitely hit the 5 minute snooze on my alarm, fallen back asleep, and had an entire intricate dream before the alarm woke me up 5 minutes later. I can also get incredibly amazing 3 minute long power naps and go from being dead on my feet to completely refreshed and ready to go for hours. No surprise, my sleep schedule is fucked. I work nights and go to school days and sometimes go 24-40 hours without getting sleep and actually function pretty well.

My partner at the time also witnessed both cats having a cat fight on top of me while I was asleep and said I never stirred. He also once found one of the cats sitting on my chest, slapping me repeatedly across the face and crying little distressed meows, unable to wake me. Now that I’m single I’m still a heavy sleeper, but I wake up if the cats call for me. I’ve also had a couple people throughout my life tell me that I’m such a still and quiet sleeper that they had to check my pulse because they couldn’t tell if I was breathing and they started to get scared.

A few years ago I had small unexplained tender bruises on my chest and arms that would not heal for several months, long enough that I was beginning to get a little concerned (is it cancer?).

One night I was lying awake at 3am when one of my cats chased the other into my bedroom and onto my bed. 4 paws came flying onto me, perfectly landing on each tender bruise before launching back off of me, then the other cat landed on me with his paws in the same spots before jumping off in chase of his furry friend.

Mystery solved, and that’s how I figured out just how heavy of a sleeper I am. My cats had been using my sleeping body as a launchpad for months and I was none the wiser until I happened to be awake.

Me all the time talking to my cat:

“Girl you are fat as fuck… … … It’s ok. Me too.”

We’re both working on it.

I live in an area that also has decent bus coverage with stops all over, although I’ve never actually taken the bus. I can’t take the bus to work because there aren’t stops where I need to go. I also attend school 19 miles away, and depending on traffic it’s anywhere from a 30-45 minute drive. Last year my car broke down and I looked into taking the bus to school for the few weeks I would be carless. It would have been a 5 1/2 hour trip each way, I would have had to take 3 or 4 buses, transfer between 2 different companies, and I would have had to walk several miles in between stops to get from the first bus company’s stop to the second’s. Realistically, I couldn’t have even left on time to make it to class or gotten back home while the buses were still running, even if I wanted to waste my life riding buses. I worked an extra 100 hours of OT that month to pay for my rental car.