Of Constellations → 𝘥. 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘧𝘰𝘺

iv. weary eyes, heavy bones

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chapter four

weary eyes, heavy bones

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If I had it my way, everyone would be good at sleeping—it only seems fair. Like breathing or eating, one must possess the ability to sleep in order to stay alive. It is an intrinsic skill given to humankind as a birthright.

However, I often don't have it my way and, as it happens, I am bad at all three of those things. This I see as highly unjust. I have asthma, food allergies to shellfish and macadamia nuts, and, worst of all, a very dysfunctional relationship with sleep.

It used to be that I never slept. As a baby, I cried a lot and slept very little. Mum still talks about a car trip during which I wailed nonstop for the entire seven hours. (I'm sorry Mum and Dad.)

However, in the few years before starting at Hogwarts, the problem became that I always slept. It started slowly at first. Then, when I was well into my tenth year, things rapidly got worse.

The first sign something was wrong was when I started to experience hallucinations right before falling asleep or just after waking up. I'd always had episodes of sleep paralysis, but it had been happening more and more frequently. They would often only last for a few seconds, but the terror felt as though it lasted for much longer.

I'd see people who weren't really there, sometimes animals, or malevolent creatures lurking in corners.

And then came the exhaustion. In the mornings, it would occasionally be impossible to get me out of bed to the point Mum or Dad would have to carry me downstairs for breakfast. The fatigue would persist, no matter how well I slept at night, no matter how many naps I took. If I stayed still for too long, I'd find myself slumped over, fast asleep.

At first, my parents thought the sleepiness was due to my stargazing into the early hours of the morning every day. They started to send me to bed at nine o'clock hoping it would help.

But it didn't help. My tiredness persisted.

For a year, I went to doctor after doctor (even a Healer at St. Mungo's, begrudgingly allowed by Mum) until my parents got frustrated with the lack of an answer. The closest we got was a possibility that I had chronic fatigue syndrome, but it was clearly not an official diagnosis, as Dr. Vickman had weakly suggested it as feasibility after Mum bullied him into it.

We finally got a prescription out of it, though—methylphenidate (you might recognize it by its more well-known name: Ritalin), which helped alleviate some of the fatigue. And, while I was still living at home, it all became less brutal. Mum let me get homework done on my own time so I could get a nap in whenever I felt like it.

Obviously, though, Hogwarts was not like that.

I didn't notice how much my symptoms were flaring up again until after a couple of weeks when the shine of my new environment began to wear off. It took a great deal of effort to make myself get up in the morning, and I often missed breakfast. During the day, that familiar overwhelming weight of exhaustion pressed down on my body unrelentingly.

It was so bad that I started falling asleep in class and sometimes went down to one meal a day—dinner—so I could take a nap before afternoon classes.

I knew I needed help.

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