Margarita Hour

Guilt. Why do we experience it? Where does it come from? How do we stop it? These are questions I wrestled with for 5 months. The title is not entirely accurate. Obviously, I did sleep in 5 months but barely. I have had insomnia since I was 14 years old, and usually it is pretty manageable. Take some sleeping pills, maintain a regular sleep routine, and stay off screens. I would follow these steps in the past, and slowly, my insomnia got better. Not. This. Time. It started in late July. I had nights where 4am was my 11pm. At first, it started off as typical insomnia symptoms. I could not sleep the entire night, or I would fall asleep in the very early hours of the morning. I started taking melatonin, but it didn’t work. I started taking prescribed sleep medication, but it didn’t work. This developed for months. I started falling asleep while doing everyday activities. When I finally fell asleep, I slept for so long and so deeply that I would wake up at 3pm. I tried to describe it to my friends and family. I got a lot of responses of “Have you tried this?” “Yes, I have tried every fruit.” (iykyk lol). I genuinely started to feel insane. I felt out of my body at times and so out of control. It felt like everything around me was falling apart, and I could not stop it. I started thinking there was something physically wrong with me. Maybe I have narcolepsy? Hypersomnia? POTS? Sleep apnea? So many doctor’s appointments with no explanation. I went to a sleep study where I did not fall asleep till about 3am, so the doctors concluded I did not have enough sleep time to continue the study for narcolepsy and hypersomnia. I felt defeated. My grades were slipping. I was constantly irritated, not working out like I used to. I felt so sad all the time. It was not until about early January that I declared to myself that 2026 will be a good year. I will reach for more and make myself proud this year. I went face-to-face with an emotion I have been terrified of for years. Guilt. It ate me alive, and I let it for so long. I would close my eyes, getting ready for sleep, and feel panicked from the mistakes I had made. I would go to campus replaying conversations and situations where I was wrong. My guilt paralyzed me. I felt unworthy of good experiences and happiness. I thought that I messed up so much I do not deserve what other people enjoy, because they are not flawed like I am. I felt like I would pray and repent and I still felt this knife of sorrow so deep in my heart it felt like even God could not pull it out. Where does guilt come from? Christians believe guilt comes from the Holy Spirit and is the consequence of sin. Atheists believe guilt comes from morals and the knowing of what is right and wrong. Let’s take spirituality out for a moment. My biggest fear is failure. I am scared that I will wake up in 20 years and have nothing and be nothing. I can handle spiders, heights, but failure haunts me like a cold hand on the neck. Guilt is the result of a failure. You hurt a friend, you failed to be a loving friend. You hurt your partner, you failed at being a good girlfriend. The list goes on. Just like an exam you didn’t study hard enough for and end up failing. You did not meet the requirements to pass the exam.You leave feeling guilty wishing that you could go back in time and study for another hour. There were mornings I would wake up feeling like my heart was in my stomach wishing I could go back and make things right. Let me tell you a secret, you can’t. What is done, is done there is no changing the past. So what? Now we have to just rot in the guilt? Absolutely not you will end up slowly killing yourself. Just like that feeling of failing an exam, you feel it, it hurts, but you learn. The next exam comes around and you prepare and study and do better. There is no magic eraser to heal all wounds you have created. There is only the next step. Now don’t get me wrong I still feel deeply with guilt and sometimes I let it pile up too much and I explode. The difference is now I am not delusional in thinking I am perfect and I can fix everything. Perfectionism has been a theme for the past two blog posts I have put out because it is so much deeper than just wanting to be perfect. It is anxiety and overthinking that you can not pick yourself up and continue on to be better than you were before. My perfectionism caused me to be the opposite of perfect. I did not meet my standards in classes, I was emotionally out of control (something I haven’t experienced since I was 17). I wanted to be perfect so badly that I ended up failing everything. So, how does sleep and the feeling of guilt tie into each other? I believed that all my problems were physical because I did not want to think that this was caused by my own mind.I have always been a person who would rather sweep things under the rug and keep going. While that has been my routine for so long my body simply couldn’t take it anymore. Now, I try to view my lack of sleep as a blessing. The long nights led to self-reflection and conversations that I have been holding off on for so long. I am still trying to work through not letting failure consume me. When I realized this was a problem inside myself, I started sleeping better, regaining my appetite, and enjoying living in a tidy, clean space. I want to end this by saying thank you for reading my second blog post. I am excited for what is to come. I want you to leave with one question in mind. “What is consuming me?” We all have our demons; it is time to release them. If you have any feedback, leave a comment or contact me through my homepage. I would love to hear your insights and maybe even a topic you’d like me to write about. It has been a pleasure exploring my mind with you, till next Friday, thank you for tuning in to MargaritaHour.