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sleep was never your best friend. you don't know when it really started, but for as long as you can remember, you've never really had a good night's rest.
every night, as your head hit the pillow, your mind would be as active as ever. and slowly, as the silence of your bedroom crept in, your thoughts would only grow louder.
soon those would leak out of your mind, and crawl into your lungs and heart, like all the noise was submerging you into a deep ocean.
the longer the silence, the deeper you were pushed under, the pressure growing in your lungs.
each time you took a breath, it was as if you couldn't breathe deep enough. like the air you were breathing wasn't actually going into your lungs.
so you would lay there in your bed, the darkness enveloping you as you tried to take deeper breaths, almost like you were trying to fill your lungs as much as you can.
the feeling only grew into the night, your body and mind over exerting itself as your anxiety grew.
soon enough, you'd be asleep from the exhaustion. and you'd wake up, your limbs grown heavy from the lack of sleep as you dragged yourself up to get up for the day.
this went on for years, until you discovered the magical world of podcasts.
it was a small tip you'd come by on one of those anxiety tip blogs, the ones with colorful graphics that you'd followed in an attempt to conquer, or at least control, the anxiety you dealt with.
it was odd the first time you set it up, a small speaker connected to your phone as you got ready for bed. you felt guilty, almost ashamed that you needed something like this to do something as basic as sleep, but at this point all your exhaustion and nerves overcame the guilt.
it was an odd change, filling the silence with just some voices but somehow it helped. your mind was so focused on taking in the story, their voices, that you drifted off into a deep sleep. and for the first time, you slept without any interruptions.
you started with history podcasts, ones that talked about niche stories and hidden tales that no one knew about.
then slowly it became d&d, or theatrical shows. anything that provided you with a story to take your mind away from your thoughts long enough to sleep. you always had them on a timer too.
this was all until you started dating peter parker. he was your best friend since childhood, and every memory you can conjure up has him hidden in the background. he knew every detail of your life, mostly because he was the one person you could never keep a secret from.
but this was one secret he never knew about. that was until one stormy night, when you were over sleeping over at his apartment. aunt may was insistent that you not drive in the rain, and reluctantly, you agreed to stay. and it was soon settled that you'd just sleep with peter in his room ("with the door open, peter" may reminded her obviously embarrassed nephew.)
