I was scared to sleep at night

Manoj Surya
6 min readMar 24, 2021

You are as good as how you keep yourself up, despite how deep you fall

Photo by Julius Drost on Unsplash

Last month, if you had a camera secretly inserted into my room’s roof corner to watch me through your computer. You would see me sticking my back to my chair until I badly felt the need to sleep.

It was scary to sleep. I didn't want to sleep. The pain was exaggerating day by day.

A couple of months ago, I finished a Marathon (42.2km run). I got a bit of invincible feeling about how much I can run within this year and next year. I knew my runs were getting better. A few months back I cycled 150km and finished a Half Iron distance duathlon (5km run, 90km cycle and 21km run, in 8.30 hours).

It was total fun and the pain was enjoyable then because it was testing my physical and mental limits. I planned to start training for the Ironman race in 2022 from April itself (Ironman race = 3.6km swim, 180km cycle, 42.2km run to finish in 16 hours). I knew I can finish it because I finished half distance already and now I have 12–14 months to train for this event. All was going well.

Last month, I started having back pain. I went to a physiotherapist and I was healing. But one day instead of getting better, my lower back pain started to get worse. I woke up the next day and could not move an inch.

I was getting a shock in my spine even if I moved a bit. I somehow leaned against the wall. Moved inch my inch and sat on the bed. When I tried to get up. I could not stand it. My legs weren’t supporting. I slowly stretched my legs bit by bit. I woke up at 7 am that day and at 7.40 am I stood on my feet.

I went to the kitchen to check what I can make for breakfast. I was feeling drowsy and though I will take a small nap before I start working. I was a bit scared to go back to sleep because I felt I had to go through this process again.

I went to sleep anyway because I wanted to know if I can getup quickly this time. It didn't take 40 mins this time but definitely, it wasn’t easy. I had to deal with shocks in the spine.

Last year, the pandemic definitely made me a little claustrophobic. When I went to a tea shop or a xerox shop for any prints. I made sure to stand myself far and also when people are near, I started to…

Manoj Surya

I write about everything I learnt to become better at life , endurance, health, books, reading and building products