The Hope Neuron

I miss when the nights were mine, when I felt like I had a haven in the dark where no one could get at me. I miss the obsessive certainty of those nights. When the windows were black, I stayed in my space with all the potential of the world at my fingertips.

But there’s a problem with my nights now. Mine are no longer pure. They are tainted by fatigue and anxiety. I can’t take control the way I used to, and I have a thought in my head that tells me I shouldn’t.

Because, much as I would like to, I can’t keep the days away. I can’t stop the sun and I can’t block out the people who live under it. There are things about the day that I have no choice but to accept. Cars will come and go, the mail will be delivered, the phone will ring, the hall may have strangers in it, knocking on doors.

And me. I become more complicated in the daytime, too. I need to eat, I have to take my pills. I have to be in touch. I have to pay the bills. I have to get out of bed, be dressed, be available, be responsible.

Pressure. I can’t help but feel the pressure around me in the day. The pressure to be. To exist. Not just to exist, but to exist properly. To be just like everybody else. And it slips. It slips all the time.

I have hope for my future and plans and goals, but part of that is being mindful of how I am now. And right now, I just want to live in the night. To be irresponsible and drink coffee whenever I feel like it. Recapture the night and live in a safe bubble of surreality while everything else happens without me.

I know, not everything can be the way it used to be. Maybe some nights I can escape into… But not all of them. I can have tonight because there’s nothing to complicate my morning. Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow night is not mine. I have to be responsible and obliging and wake up at 6am on Monday.

I know I can’t stay in the night bubble. I know it isn’t healthy. Still, the things we want aren’t always good for us, are they? Everyone’s got a vice. Or two, or three. The nights used to be my worst indulgence. Now I have to cut back, and I’ve got to admit it’s not easy.

I guess you could say I quit them for a while. I didn’t have much choice. I was too tired to escape into my nights for a long time. Years. Lately though, I’ve been fighting back. I got plain sick of running out of steam at 8pm. I’ve been drinking coffee in the evenings to grab back the lost time.

It’s not a terrible thing. In fact, it combats my ADHD at a time of day when my prescription meds have fizzled out. I can only really write creatively / at all past sundown without caffeine to lend a hand. Since getting back into writing is precisely my priority, you can see why I might want the help.

But it’s not all good news. With this new version of an old habit, I am well aware that I run the risk of messing up my sleep schedule. Being able to function well at night is extremely valuable, but if it’s going too well, then I start to slip into reversal territory. I go to bed too late, I wake up too late. The process moves along, hour by hour until I’ve eaten up the morning with sleeping in.

I don’t want to get that out of whack. Much as I hate to admit it, functioning in the day is still something I need to do. The nights are good for hiding out in, but I can’t be a hermit all the time. I need to go out for the basic elements of my survival… Food, medicine, toilet paper, toothpaste. Besides that, I need to be in contact with the other people in my life. If I just retreat into the afterhours and never come out, it’s going to look pretty bad. Worrisome. Maybe even cause for alarm. I don’t want to do that to the people I care about.

So I guess you could say I have night nostalgia. I miss something that’s not really what was going on in my past. I just miss feeling like nothing could get to me if I didn’t let it. Nothing stressful, nothing hurtful. But it wasn’t ever really that way. Day always comes back. Stressors can get to me in the night.

In fact, sometimes that’s when the rumination thrives, isn’t it? The catch there is that it thrives in the night when I’m trying to fall asleep. That’s the big thing that grates me. Falling asleep sucks. Very rarely do I actually want to try. It’s hard when you have a tug between needing to settle down and wanting to make the most of your sanctuary.

I know I have to compromise. I’m planning on it. I even have strategies to unwind before sleeping that I’m trying to develop. But this night? This night is mine. That’s the other side of the compromise. I will give some nights back to good sleep hygiene, and other ones, I get to keep. It might only be Fridays and Saturdays that I can truly get away with it…. for the foreseeable future, but even that bit of leeway is enough to make me happy. It’s enough to give me a little taste of that idealized past.

Some nights will be mine again.