Hard to sleep

"I only thought it for a minute but it got me down, the kind of feeling when you've got something to cry about. And all the talking turned to screaming that I couldn't help..."

Author’s note : Music brings people together, that’s not new. The idea was to create a series of collabs with different talented writers, inspired by songs that moved us enough to want to make the melodies last beyond the final notes. But before you find a song, you have to find an artist that speaks to both authors : Caroline and I very quickly agreed on Gracie Abrams. She’s one of those singers that pulls at your heartstrings in the most bittersweet, relatable way. She’s soft but also powerfully raw, strong in her fragility. Many titles were mentioned, and for a moment it seemed like we were going with the more famous “That’s So True”. But ultimately, we chose to take a different, more underrated and perhaps surprising direction, and settled on “Hard to Sleep”.

Here are our personal interpretations of the song :

A rain-laden cloud drifts across an otherwise clear sky.

On the surface nothing’s changed, but my skittish heart is already pulling out an umbrella. I have thick skin but the call is coming from inside the house. One drop of grey easily turns my world into an ocean of gloom, always seconds away from swimming in a private catastrophe that only makes sense to me, me, me.

I’ve learned to carry the heavy record of my thoughts with grace, balancing them with my back straight. So don’t push, there’s such a thin veil between me and all the rest. One wrong step, it spills and makes a mess.

I’m running in circles in the maze of my mind, the girl I was meant to be truly lost herself. I keep dying at the tip of my tongue and whatever comes out never feels like me, me, me.

Don’t you tell me it’s better to let go, I’d rather drown than let anyone get caught in my fickle weather. I keep my mouth shut to save us all from my inside storms, but I worry I’ve forgotten how to float and now there’s so much water in my nose.

No reprieve in the dead of night, that’s when the weight of the world feels the closest. Hard to sleep when I’m gasping for air with nothing to hold onto. It’s only me, me, me.

- Marie Rose 🥀

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My back slams against the mattress in fatigue, my body unable to remain upright for a second more. The weight of the world feels so close. I curl into a ball of energy, hoping that if I stay still it will melt away. My flesh is exhausted but my mind is spinning and spinning, losing all control. So instead of drifting off to peace and dreams, I feel like something made of bright lights and gasoline has been injected into my veins. Is it medicine? Caffeine? Or the thoughts in my head?

This isn’t me, me, me.

I can hear the seconds ticking away on a clock from another room. Silence burrows its way into my ground, places a pillow over my mouth and presses down with brute force. My lungs gasp for air, but I’m suffocating here in this room, all alone.

It’s only me, me, me.

My alarm is supposed to buzz in three hours, but here I am wide awake. Something heavy is sitting on my chest, something hot, something sharp. It’s like I ran a marathon, my heart pounding, my brow sweating, but all I did was dream. Even here in my safest place, I’m overthinking everything I never said. My thoughts swarm around me with the speed and venom of mosquitoes and they are out for blood. I swat at them with all I have, but they are multiplying.

These thoughts shouldn’t belong to me, me, me.

I can’t help but think about who I am, what they think, how I fit. Honestly, it’s killing me a little to be different.

But it’s only me, me, me.

Don’t you tell me it’s better to let go. In the spinning, the suffocating, the swarming, I will hold on. Even when I feel like I’m losing all control, when it’s hard to sleep, I refuse to lose me, me, me.

- caroline cherry

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Discover more of Caroline’s work :

The tension between humility and confidence

And mine :

Trust me I'm not falling

Thanks for reading us, Caroline and Marie.