From the start of middle school a lot of things have started to change for Elia. Her parents went off to work in another city and she was left behind for school. After being out of her parent’s control she gained a lot of bad habits which one of the most serious ones is staying up until the next day.
Since this was a new experience for her she was very excited that she can choose to sleep when she wants. This habit had been maintained for a few months and slowly there’s a huge shift in her daily schedule. She started to only eat twice a day at the wrong times when she was supposed to eat three full meals and most importantly her sleeping schedule got messed up. She would stay up until it’s almost the time to go to school and sleep when she gets back and wake up at night.
This had happened too often and of course her parents noticed. Her parents warned her of the consequences of staying up late and what can happen but Elia didn’t listen. After frequently staying up all night each day when she wakes up her heartbeat would be beating very fast. She didn’t know why and she never thought that it could be affecting her health issues. Instead, she couldn’t care much and continued her habit. Until one day in school, in one of her classes the teacher started teaching about sleep for teenagers. Then she started realizing what could happen if she continued her sleeping habit. “It can’t be that serious”, as she tried to comfort herself.
Although she still has concerns about it, she still decided to make some changes. She made a plan in her head and tried it on the first night. She set a time on what time she should be in bed but she couldn’t control herself staying on the phone. She kept pushing back the time and it got later and later, she still wasn’t able to sleep at the designated time. It was a huge fail on her first try. The second night she got in bed earlier and got all the lights off waiting to fall asleep from the darkness. But she was still on her phone so she couldn’t fall asleep. She failed again. Her phone was a huge distraction when it comes to sleeping. For the next few months she tried other methods such as listening to music to sleep, drinking sleeping tea before bed, and using sleeping balms. Those methods did allow her to sleep but it didn’t manage to help her sleep at an early time. However, there are other things that affected her sleep. She got busier with school work and somehow because she was too tired she was able to sleep earlier at night.
Things started to go on a nice path. It had been maintained for quite a long time. But then the pandemic affected her sleeping habit again. School was closed and there was not much to do during the pandemic. She started playing video games more often and maybe she got too addicted, she stayed up the whole night for it. Her sleeping habit got worse again and until she realized that, it was after the pandemic. After school started again there’s some days that she managed to sleep early but some days she couldn’t. She gave up on trying to change again and she maintained as it is.