From around 11 p.m. Saturday night until 10 a.m. Monday morning, I slept approximately 30 hours. The numbers are a bit fuzzy, but I do know I woke up at around 4 on Sunday afternoon, hazily aware that it was late, but not that late. I know that I roused myself enough to cancel plans to make meatballs with a friend, then, when I actually mustered the energy to rouse myself from my bed and walk outside to get a bagel, realized I felt like I was going to topple over, and canceled my plans to go to A Little Murray Christmas (if you've ever seen the amazing entertainer Murray Hill, you know that he is not someone you should cancel plans to see unless severely ill).

The main culprit for my feeling like my body was trying to claw its way out of me, my nausea, wooziness and severe lack of energy would be my period, except that in my twenty-plus years of menstruating, I do not ever remember having symptoms like that. Pain, yes. Emotional angst, yes. Wanting to stay in bed all day, definitely. But the kind of pain where it feels like I would rather sleep forever than face it? No. I'm not that much of a baby when it comes to pain; I have tattoos, I've been in pain before, but this pain was something new and awful. It made the dull buzz of depression and emotional upheaval of the last few months seem like nothing.

Sleeping, I can't help but assume, was my body's way of avoiding experiencing that level of pain. Yet it also tapped into a frequent fantasy of mine of late: the desire to escape, disappear, vanish until a time when life is magically better, simply because the future has arrived. That is a utopian way of thinking, certainly, but also one that on some level is factually true; next month I will receive a royalty check that, even on the small side, will give me a bit of financial security I don't have right now. I find myself wishing it were January in the same way that for much of this year I wished to leapfrog over the hard parts and get past being 35 to 36, which I've found, to my chagrin, has not been as drama- and stress-free as I'd imagined. Still, when a day or week or task seems too daunting, even when I know I should be leaping right in to confront it and get the most challenging parts over with as soon as I can, I find myself easily falling for the desire to run away, pretend the day or moment doesn't exist so I don’t have to face it.

Perhaps I didn’t realize the extreme level of angst my daily life has taken on since I got laid off a little over two months ago, though I'd be hard pressed not to be aware of it. My to do list seems to grow exponentially longer (in the time I've been writing this essay, I've paused at least five times to add to it), and I wake up with a gnawing sense of dread, shame and guilt about all that I haven’t done. Those feelings are tempered by a sense of possibility and hopefulness which has inspired me to submit work to new venues I'd be overjoyed, to put it mildly, to see my work in, but overall I've begun to feel like I would much rather sleep through the next week, or month, or maybe year, because the daily work of life, of making sure I'm getting the most of out of each day, of contributing, of being a better person, feels overwhelming. It's enough just to make it through the day, and sometimes even that seems like a gargantuan task.

I almost long for the hyper-immediacy of a panic attack, as ridiculous as that sounds; it's been a month since I've had one, yet this malaise is its opposite, a pervasive emptiness that seems to push all thoughts and emotions aside in favor of a dull-down hazy murkiness. It's especially laughable when I slap on my new favorite red lipstick, because then I see the contrast between my insides and outsides extremely clearly. The lipstick works because it makes me smile, it brightens more than just my lips, but it makes me feel a little bit like a fraud. Does someone who feels so dead inside deserve to rock Make Up For Ever's Rouge Artist Intense 44? Perhaps not, but on some days it's the best approximation of humanity I can come up with.

Sleeping for so long meant I had lots of dreams, some utterly absurd, some peppered with exes, family members or strangers, some intense and vivid, some inconsequential. My thoughts were muted, less "Why aren't you doing this right now?" than "You should really get up sometime soon so you can do this." There was something comforting about knowing that as I lay in my deconstructed bed (really my mattress on the floor, with the frame I've meant to throw out still taking up space in my room), snug under several layers of covers, I could hear the rest of my neighborhood going about its day. I liked knowing that the world hadn't ended, that when I was ready, it was there waiting for me, as I drifted in and out of the real world and one of my own making.

I believe the lesson I needed to learn is that sometimes I need to shut off completely, not for the weeks or months I might fantasize about, but for a day, a weekend, enough time to recharge myself and recognize that I can only do so much at a time, and there are only so many problems I can try to fix on my own without exploding, or feeling like I might. I'm not proud of having slept that long; as opposed to my fantasy, in real life it felt slothful and wrong, not decadent. Then again, I rarely take a vacation where I just lie on the beach (but am hoping to take one to Hawaii as soon as I can scrape together the cash). Maybe I should build a little "relaxation time" into each day, rather than constantly feeling like I haven't done enough. I may not have, but sometimes that's okay, and maybe I can even be fully conscious and give myself a true break, one I can actively appreciate, rather than simply dream my way through.