For this project, I wanted to focus on my own relationship with sleep. I’ve always had trouble sleeping, even as a kid. Though, I could nap wherever and whenever, actually going to sleep in bed at night was always the worst part. I think the silence and solitude would scare me out of sleeping every night. And so, this was the start of me hearing “just count sheep until you fall asleep”. Of course, that rarely ever worked, but it still stuck we me. Before I got my phone (and subsequent phone addiction) in 6th grade, I would tell myself sotries for hours while in bed trying to fall asleep. Occasionally I would try the sheep counting, usually with no luck.
As I got older, I continued to encounter this motif of sheep. There was a game I actually would play on my phone which was basically tapping the screen to make the cartoon sheep in the game jump over a fence. Over time you would unlock different colored sheep, cows, pigs, and other less common animals. The idea was that this would help individuals fall asleep, but for me it just kept me up tapping until I finally would pass out from exhaustion. So I guess in a way it did work.
Unfortunately another aspect of sleep for me was my nightmares. I’ve had very vivid dreams since I was a child, and often they end up being unnerving as well. I don’t remember as many from my younger years, but there were definetely dreams that shook me and have stayed with me until now. They only got worse as time went on, peaking around my freshman year here at Stony. Since, rarely a week would go by without a stress-dream happening that would be bad enough to put me in a state of frigid fear as I would wake up. Thankfully with the medication I now take for my anxiety, the dreams have gotten better (or at least I don’t remember them when I wake up). Unfortunately, there are times when either I forget to take my meds, or they just don’t work for some reason, and I end up waking up in a cold sweat and questioning reality.
All this is to say, I decided to use this project to connect with my sleep and also tie in a fun thing I’ve heard all my life: sheep. I’ve been working on crocheting sheep to represent every night since we’ve started the project. I use different colors to signify different days/nights, black sheep being the really bad nights, white sheep when I don’t remember any dreams/wake up fine, and colorful sheep when I wake up with the vague sense of dread but not long enough to actually affect my day.
This project is not yet finished as I want to carry it through to the final, and figure out some way of arranging the sheep as well as giving them eyes thanks to the beads I finally got from Walmart this weekend.
Further Reading: