The Art of Resting

It was late, so Lexi had offered to drive.

“Are you sure?” Cara asked, glancing at her smart watch and tapping her fingers against the thigh of her jeans to calculate the length of the four-hour trip, “We won’t get to the lodge before 2am.”

“I’ll be fine. I don’t get tired.” Lexi confirmed, extending her hand for the keys. She was used to skeptical faces and cautionary doubts, but as she predicted, an hour later, everyone in the van was asleep, soothed by the hum of tires turning at a steady speed on a highway, and she was very much awake, driving safely to their destination.

Lexi been anticipating this particular ski trip ever since she joined the 24-hour climbing gym in 2018. She remembers how brave it felt to walk up to the front desk of the gym alone and with no climbing experience. The giant bouldering wall peppered with colorful hand grips bent in various directions behind the desk, and climbers dropped freely onto the padded floor with a thud. She wore black biking shorts and a gray muscle tank with neon socks. There was something about neon that fueled confidence, and she had needed that added boost to get out of her car and walk up to that front desk in the first place.

The friendly staff welcomed her and showed her how to use chalk and fasten her rented climbing shoes – the only equipment needed. She signed a waiver before they pointed her to the climbing wall and showed her how to identify the markings of a beginner climb.

“Ask anyone for help - the community is really friendly!” they’d said, and Lexi had hoped it was true.

All afternoon, she climbed privately, anchoring the metal toe of her shoe against the narrow holds, standing and using that strength to reach the next step. She usually only making it a few feet above the ground before her legs started to tremble, and her fear of falling convinced her to climb back down, before trying again. She paced herself not by her personal fatigue, but based on the patterns of others, taking breaks every ten or fifteen minutes, as others did, and using that time to drink water and watch the group crowd around and cheer on more experienced climbers who could hang freely by only a few fingers before swinging their weight and jumping to the next hold. She watched from a distance, not feeling like she belonged but also feeling very safe and secure in the corner where she sat. Hours and hours went by before she realized everyone still climbing had arrived after her, and decided she should leave, for now.

She went back twice before signing up for a beginner’s class. It was perfect. She finally got a feel for how to actually get more than a few feet off the ground, and how to fall safely, and she formed a group of climbers with a few other newbies, including Cara, who was also new to the area. The beginner group vowed to climb together every week, and they did. They were outsiders together and that made it okay. This tightly knit group of athletes felt familiar to Lexi – like her high school basketball team – and she wanted to spend all of her free time with them.

When they decided to go on an overnight ski trip together, Lexi was thrilled. It meant so many hours together doing something she really loved with people she really loved. She knew no one when she moved to Colorado and here she was, only a few months later, driving a van full of the best people she knew in the middle of the night.

When they finally arrived twenty minutes past 2 o’clock in the morning, everyone groggily lifted their heads and unlocked their seatbelts once Lexi turned the car off. They silently gathered their bags from the back of the van, acquired room keys, said goodnights and escaped away to fill the rooms of the ski lodge, but Cara hesitated, claiming to not be able to sleep well in new places which was probably Lexi’s favorite thing to hear. “Let’s make tea – I’ll stay up and talk with you for a while – I never get tired.” Lexi explained, which was true.

Cara snuggled into a couch and Lexi into an arm chair– a coffee table for their tea cups between them, and began talking. They talked about skiing and road trips and overnight trips they’d taken as kids.

“So you can’t sleep either,” Cara said, over an hour later.

“I literally never do.” Lexi confirmed.

“What, do you nap a lot?” Cara asked.

“Nope.”

“Huh.” Cara seemed surprised by this, “I never would have guessed. You always have so much energy – what’s your secret? Coffee?”

“My secret is that I don’t require sleep. It’s my superpower. And I never get tired. Never.”

Cara laughed and stared with the same skeptical expression that Lexi was used to seeing in response to this confession. But instead of the usually follow-up questions and accusations, Cara just said, “Wow. That’s fascinating.”

“I ran a marathon for fun, once, just because I could. I just showed up and started running and kept running for four hours and didn’t stop. And at the end when you’re expected to nearly collapse in exhaustion, I faked it. I came home and took a shower and did jumping jacks for another hour and decided to stretch out in the sun. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to feeling fatigue. My muscles were tired – my body was tired – but even then, I couldn’t sleep. I closed my eyes and meditated for a while, but I was fully awake. Because, from what I understand, sleep is when you’re supposed to lose consciousness. I never have.”

Cara stared ahead, clearly concerned, but impressed. “I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever seen you sleeping.”

Lexi just smiled, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to come up with anything, but thankful for the captive audience. Cara was one of those trusting people who always responded with interest instead of doubt. Lexi loved that about her.  

“I used to understand sleep as this sort of forced nap time when you lay with your eyes closed and get lost in quiet thoughts. I can do that. I’ve trained myself to do that for several hours at a time. But I’ve never actually fallen asleep, as they say. I’m always awake, I’ve just mastered the art of resting, but strictly from an assimilation perspective. I don’t get anything from it.  

“I’ve always known she had supernatural powers. As a child, I filled my pockets with roots and rocks and bought them home every day. When my mother grew exasperated with my “earth collection” she cut the pockets out of my pants and coats so that I couldn’t fill them with rocks, but I always found a way. In the mornings, after I went to school, my mother would often discover intricately designed towers of rocks in my room. She’d confront me when I got home: “When did you have time to do this?” And I’d just say, “At night – when I couldn’t sleep.”

“I think about time a lot and joke that my life experience is, on average, thirty percent longer than anyone else my age. But really, those hours don’t belong to me. I spend most of the time reading, worrying, writing anxious thoughts. The usual things you’d associate with a compulsive sleep averse human. The difference is, I’ll never pass out from exhaustion. I’ll never know the power of a good night’s sleep, or how it feels to wake up. All I have is how I feel: I can assume the closest thing is slow deep breaths relaxing in a hammock?

“And I envy people who can feel. Even people with insomnia can feel exhaustion and relief. I just feel, present. Which is a gift if you like the present reality. But I see sleep as an escape: an opportunity to dream and separate from the pain of the world: physical and emotional. I’ve never done that. I guess the closest I’ve come is watching a movie that pulls me away from my reality. But even then, I’m awake.

With this last point, Lexi realized that Cara had, in fact, fallen asleep. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was slightly open. Her head was balanced against the armrest and she was breathing slowly and audibly. Lexi looked at her with calculated admiration and jealously. She considered waking her up, but after checking her watch, saw that it was already 4:30am. Breakfast would be served in an hour and a half. She tossed the lobby blanket over her arms and legs, and pretended to sleep herself until dawn.

A few hours later, everyone was gathering in the lobby which had filled with scents of warm oatmeal and eggs and blueberry muffins. Lexi saw Cara filling an oversized mug with coffee, almost certainly accommodating for the hours of sleep she’d missed.

Lexi walked over and said,

“Hey, thanks for listening to me last night. People don’t usually believe me about the never sleeping thing.”

Cara smirked, and winked, and contorted her face into a whole host of expressions that seemed unfamiliar, “To be fair, I didn’t believe you the first time you told me.”

Lexi turned this idea over in her head for a few seconds, wondering if they’d had the conversation before, “That wasn’t the first time I told you?”

“Last night was the first, and the second, and the seventh. You’re not the only one with a superpower, you know.”

Cara casually walked away, and continued to speak, knowing that Lexi would be following behind her, “I freeze time. I can re-live time. I can climb a wall a hundred times before I get it right, and you’ll only remember my last attempt.”

She stopped and turned around, smiling at the same shocked stare that Lexi always made when she disclosed her own superpower, before freezing time and erasing the conversation all over again, “I know, it’s a good one, right?”