Yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and the universe took that personally.
My body decided to mark the occasion with a hormonal symphony (the kind that only people with uteruses truly understand) and paired it, generously, with a manic peak. Then I forgot to take my melatonin. So 2am, 3am, and even 5am found me flat on my back, blinking at the ceiling, drafting blog entries in my head and mentally crafting things I’ll never actually make.
Every time I drifted off, my brain jolted me back awake like it had something very important to say.
It did not.
Somewhere in those restless hours, I was struck by a profound and generous thought: I should embrace life’s circumstances. Take the bad, alchemize it into good. Lean in.
Nighttime lies to you like that.
There’s something about the dark, whether you’re in pain, sick, sleepless, or just running on scrambled brain chemistry, that warps your perception in both directions. When you’re suffering at 3am, everything feels catastrophic and permanent. But when your mind is buzzing with too much serotonin at midnight, you feel invincible. You feel chosen. You draft manifestos. You solve problems. You decide, with full conviction, that you are finally going to become the person you were always meant to be.
Then the sun comes up.
And the sun is honest in a way the night never is.
In the daylight, the catastrophes of 3am shrink back to their actual size so they feel more manageable, ordinary, and survivable. But the grand plans? The invincibility? That shrinks too. The world, it turns out, does not reorganize itself around your 3am epiphanies. The world just keeps going, indifferent and unimpressed, and now you have to put on pants and participate in it while running on three hours of sleep and whatever is left of your dignity.
Last night, the world was my oyster.
This morning, my neighbor’s dog will not stop barking, and I am fantasizing about consequences.
The gap between the 3am visionary and the 9am wreckage is one of the more humbling places to live. But maybe that’s the actual insight that survived the night: you don’t have to be the person who has it all figured out in the dark. You just have to be the person who shows up when the sun comes up anyway.
Pants and everything.
Never really thought about it this way, but you are absolutely right. The 3 a.m. worries and problems always seem much smaller in the light of day. Great post.
It is funny how the dark seems to magnify everything.
Thank you for taking time to read.
Really powerful reflection—such a good reminder of how different things can feel in the middle of the night versus in the light of day. This really resonated with me.
Thank you for reading.
Night time thinking can be good for solving problems, or creating them, depending on the state of mind. Either way, everything looks different when the sun comes up again.
Do you live in my body? LOL Your nights are my nights!
I do, however, have a plan. When i start thinking about things to blog or paint…I get up and do them. No matter what time it is. Get the stuff out of my mind so I can sleep. Even if it’s just writing down notes or drawing outlines of what I want to paint so I don’t forget.
Works for most of the time. Sometimes, it’s just staring at the ceiling.
I think a lot of people have similar experiences when it comes to sleepless nights. My household is odd though, there’s a person sleeping in pretty much every corner, so sleepless nights I have to spend ponderingly silentely, less I wake everyone up.
What is it with the 3 am stuff? That’s the time I wake up every night/morning lately and can’t get back to sleep. I try not to think at all.
There are so many different things people have said about the 3 o’clock hour, but isn’t it uncanny that 3am is one of the times that most people see on restless nights. Or even normal nights and having to wake for a drink or restroom break, always seems to be 3am.
Well I either go to sleep at 3am or wake up at that hour! If I wake up at 3, I get tired during the day but I never quit to take a nap because the means I’ll be up until 3am! But I’m also like Eydie, if I’m awake at 2-3ish, I’ll get up instead of tossing and turning and do some blogging and start reorganzing a room!
I have to be as quiet as a mouse in the small hours of the night/morning, because there are people sleeping in what seems like every corner of my house. Sometimes I’ll stay up on my computer for a long time, but nothing productive every really comes of it. I just end up doomscrolling.