There's one afternoon I'll never be able to forget. Waking up in the driver's seat of my car, groggy and disoriented, to my phone blowing up with 17 missed calls from my boss.
What was supposed to be a 20-minute lunch break had somehow turned into a three-hour nap in the company parking lot.
I'd slept through an entire client meeting.
Walking back into that building felt like a slow-motion nightmare. Every set of eyes in the office found me. My manager's face said everything she didn't. My afternoon schedule had been reshuffled around my disappearance, and I had to stand in front of my team and explain where I'd been.
The truth was, I'd been running on fumes for months. I genuinely couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten more than five consecutive hours of sleep.
Every morning was a battle just to get upright. My neck felt like concrete, my knees and back ached the moment I moved, and my head was wrapped in a fog that coffee could barely dent.
I was drinking three cups before 9am just to feel functional.
And my family was absorbing all of it. I'd lose my temper with my husband over nothing. I'd sit there blank-faced while my kids talked to me. I kept cancelling on people because I was simply too drained to show up.
I'd already tried everything I could think of. Sleep aids, new pillows, cutting screens at night but nothing stuck. Eventually, I stopped fighting it. Maybe some people just aren't built for good sleep. Maybe I was one of them.