I keep a constant stress level of about a 7 out of 10, and most nights, I don't actually lay down to go to sleep until about three in the morning--the concept is foreign to me. My life has consisted of waking up, mulling about my day, finally catching my stride around 4pm, doing homework/housework/or workwork until about 10, then socializing after. When I spoke to my roommate, Andrew, and my life-coach, Kasi, they both recommended that I just needed to go to bed earlier, and I don't even know how. Maybe lay in bed and softly sing myself a lullaby? Something melodic, but topical like No Scrub by TLC? I'm not sure.
But all the best things happen once the sun goes down, and I'm not really sure what my life would look like if I chose to miss all of those things just so that I don't feel like passing out all day long. If I could take caffeine pills, I would, but I already worry enough--I don't want to be so excited, so excited, and then so scared. It just doesn't seem worth it. So, I have to make the choice: give up three of the most socially active hours of my day, or perhaps, try and go to bed before midnight every night. It really is quite the conundrum, especially when I go back and reflect on all the great things that have happened between the hours of 11:00pm and 3:00am. Last week, for instance, I avoided going to bed for some odd reason, so instead, I got on one of the three dating apps that I have on my phone (I'm lonely, okay? Just let me have this). I had been talking to someone for a couple weeks who seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't pinpoint it. We talked a little more, and we realized that we had ran into each other at Einstein Bagels a couple weeks earlier--we flirted for a little bit, and then I didn't get charged for my cream cheese. Once we established that, we figured out that we live thirty seconds walking from each other, and we took a walk at 2:00am and kissed in the woods. If I don't stay up until 2:00am, then when am I supposed to have my Generation Y, rom-com-esque moments with people that I've met in Einstein Bagels/through online dating apps? It truly is a mystery.But the problem with that lifestyle is that it comes with a price. While I was looking through pictures tonight from a year or two ago, I noticed that I looked so much more alive and fresh at 21 than I do now. I also shaved my translucent beard more often, which was also a plus. And now, as happy as I am in my pictures, I've started noticing the most difference in my eyes. They're not as open as they used to be, and they have these pockets around them, which either means that Zak Bednar farted on my pillow again (see Did You Fart on My Pillow?) or maybe, just maybe, all those hours I spent up and about during college are finally catching up to my still gorgeous, but feeble twenty-three year old body. I don't understand exactly when it happens to a person, but much like a baby or most of the kittens my mom wouldn't let me play with as a child, things need sleep.
College was a different story though--college was a time when no one slept, and looking back, that was always kind of our choice. We blamed exams and tests and papers and (a Maryville College student's favorite excuse) thesis, but in reality, we could have all been asleep by midnight every night if we had wanted to be. But instead, Nam and I would make our way down to the Carnegie parlor and take the community recliners and make small homework cots where we would spend hours on Facebook and Twitter, when we weren't talking to each other. And when that would become too monotonous, we would go outside and listen to sophomores and juniors talk about the superiority of Pokemon Red and Blue to Pokemon Silver (which, if you're asking me, nothing could trump Pokemon Yellow, but that's neither here nor there). Simply put, the nighttime was our time, and it was a moment that we could come together and share stories and stupid opinions and other aspects of life that didn't matter when the sun was up--things that the daylight deemed too trivial for its presence.It was those nights that I saw some of my friends go through the greatest transformations that I've ever seen a person go through in his or her life. You don't sit down over lunch at 1:00pm and casually discuss what it means to lose one of your best friends to an untimely death or how it feels to question the message of God that you've been fed your entire life. Those kind of things happen when everything else in the world gets quiet, and you're left with the noise of the voice in your head, the crackle of your fourth cigarette smoldering, and the words of the person sitting next to you, if they choose to even speak at all. That's the power of the nighttime--it has the strength to break you down to the core of who you are while retaining the levity to bring you back up again, and you don't get that unless you've spent a good deal of your life living as much in the nighttime as you do in the day.
But in a way, that part of the nighttime is a chapter. Andrew is in bed, and so is our other roommate, Matt. The third roommate, Ben, is not coming home for the night, so that leaves me, up again past midnight typing all of the considerations I used to have in forum, into an appropriate-length blog post for the world to consider on its own. And I guess it's good to come to the realization that everyone, myself included, needs sleep. A year out of college does a lot--just a few Fridays ago, I was standing behind a young guy at 7-11 who had a pint of Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake and a Coke Zero, and I thought to myself, Damn, that looks like a good night. I wonder if he'd want to be friends. Obviously, it wouldn't hurt to get some rest--so that's what I plan on doing, as soon as I'm done. But no matter how many nights I choose healthy sleep over the alternative, I will always look to the night with the deepest respect, and I'm sure that there will be plenty of evenings where that special presence of the night will resurface again. It will always be there waiting--holding all of the vulnerabilities and adventures that the daylight can only dream of.